Re: Orphan table files at data/base/

On Wed, 2024-02-28 at 15:44 +0200, Riivo Kolka wrote:
> I was an unfortunate sequence of commands (all in single transaction)
>
> DROP TABLE huge;
> CREATE TABLE huge AS... (huge PostGIS ST_Union operation);
> CREATE INDEX ON huge USING GIST (geometry);
>
> by a well-meaning user, that caused a crash+recovery:
>
> server process (PID 92411) was terminated by signal 9: Killed
> terminating any other active server processes
> all server processes terminated; reinitializing
> database system was not properly shut down; automatic recovery in progress
>
> And that left behind 280GB of files (of TABLE huge):
> data/base/16384/2403959
> ...
> data/base/16384/2403959.282
>
>
> SELECT pg_filenode_relation(0,2403959);
> -- returns NULL
>
> may I do
> sudo rm data/base/2403959*
> ?

If you *know* these files belong to the table created with
CREATE TABLE huge AS SELECT ...
then you can do that.

If you are not 100% certain, go the safe way and use dump/restore
to a new database. Then DROP DATABASE on the old database, and
all orphaned files will be gone.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe