Re: BUG #2386: pg_restore doesn't restore large objects

I'm a bit hurt by your statement that what I sent was just about useless :(
The problem here is that I am new to PostgreSQL and PGAdmin III and so, in
my confusion about what's normal and what's not, I am unable to provide you
with all the details that would help you resolve the problem. However, I
tried to be clear about what actions didn't work and those that did. Just as
a point of reference, I was essentially thrown into the world of PostgreSQL
where the installations were incomplete and the databases were poorly
designed so the learning curve has been short and steep.
So, let me try to explain this again.

I recently added an LO object to a database using Peter Mount's LO type. So
far, that's working. Yesterday, I made a backup of the database in order to
restore it onto my test server. I used PGAdmin III to do the backup and it
worked OK. Due to the problems I'm having with the restore, I tried the
backup from two Mac OS X G4 servers and one Mac OS X Intel Dou server. All
the backups were run from PGAdmin III and they all seem to work. I didn't
attempt to restore every backup from every machine but they all ran the same
and no error messages appeared.

When I try to restore the backup using PGAdmin III, the log window begins to
fill up. Near the end, when it should say it's restoring the BLOBS an error
message appears stating the BLOBS couldn't be restored. I don't have the
exact text of the message but I could get it for you if needed. I even
created a test database with one table and two fields. The fields were
recordid and logo (the LO type field). I couldn't even get this database to
restore using PGAdmin III. The point here is that it doesn't matter which
server I tried to restore too or which database I used (as long as it had at
least one large object stored in it), if I used PGAdmin III, the same error
message appeared at the same place in the process. However, if I restored
the backup by opening a command or terminal window and ran the command from
the command line, it worked. You should have no problem reproducing the same
error message that I received. If you don't see the same problem, let me
know and the next time I go to do a restore I'll get the details for you.

By the way, when I put the backup file on one of the Macs and then ran the
restore using the command line from the Mac Terminal window I was only
prompted for a password once. However, when restoring the backup onto the
Windows 2003 server I was prompted for the password at the beginning of the
process and then just before restoring the BLOBs. Don't know how this might
be related by I thought I would let you know.

If you are unable to reproduce the problem by simply attempting to restore a
backup of a database that has some LO data stored in it, let me know and
I'll start from scratch and send you all the details that I can come up
with.

Patrick Headley
Linx Consulting, Inc.
(303) 916-5522
LinxConsulting(at)comcast(dot)net
www.linxco-inc.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Lane [mailto:tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us]
Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 2:14 PM
To: Patrick Headley
Cc: pgsql-bugs(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [BUGS] BUG #2386: pg_restore doesn't restore large objects

"Patrick Headley" <LinxConsulting(at)comcast(dot)net> writes:
> Description: pg_restore doesn't restore large objects

At no point did you show us exactly what you did or exactly what went
wrong, so even though this report has a lot of version-number details,
it's just about useless :-(. Please see the reporting suggestions at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/bug-reporting.html

regards, tom lane