Re: could not locate a valid checkpoint record

Dilipan Sebastiampillai <dilipan(dot)sebastiampillai(at)framestore-cfc(dot)com> writes:
> I tried ( after copying thes PGDATA dir obviously ) :
> pg_resetxlog /var/lib/pgsql/data/ -f

> After that postgreSQL starts but I realised that pg_database is empty (
> it contains only template0 and template1 ) .

It sounds like pg_resetxlog guessed at an XID counter that is too small
and so all your data rows seem to be "in the future".

You need to find out approximately where the XID counter had been.
You can probably tell this by looking at the pg_clog directory;
read the pg_resetxlog man page for details. I would suggest paying
close attention to the other settable options for resetxlog, too
--- if it got XID wrong then it likely got the others wrong as well.

Once you get out of this I'd suggest a dump/initdb/restore to make
sure your data is consistent; you may well have more problems than
appear on the surface.

Oh, and updating to the latest release of the 7.4 branch would be
a good idea too ;-). There are some pretty serious known bugs in
7.4.5.

regards, tom lane