Re: Postgres 9.3 read block error went into recovery mode

Albe Laurenz <laurenz(dot)albe(at)wien(dot)gv(dot)at> wrote:
> Shuwn Yuan Tee wrote:
>
>> We recently experienced crash on out postgres production server.
>> Here's our server environment:

>> - in OpenVZ container

>> ERROR:  could not read block 356121 in file "base/33134/33598.2": Bad address
>>
>> LOG:  server process (PID 21119) was terminated by signal 7: Bus error

> Unless my math is off, a PostgreSQL disk file should not contain
> more than 131072 blocks (1GB / 8KB), so something is whacky
> there.

Not at all; the block number is the logical block number within the
relation; it determines both the segment to read from (in this case
".2") and the offset into that segment.  That all looks fine.

> I am no hardware guy, but I believe that a bus error would
> indicate a hardware problem.

Or a VM problem.  Personally I have never seen this except in a VM,
and the cause always turned out to be a VM bug.  Be sure you are
up-to-date on bug fixes for the software.

--
Kevin Grittner
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company