Almost all access to database hangs (fwd)

This is postgresql 7.0.3. Can someone help with clearing the problem
and saving his data?

------- Forwarded Messages - amalgamated

From: Sven Fischer <sepreh(at)gmx(dot)de>
To: 92641(at)bugs(dot)debian(dot)org
Subject: Bug#92641: Similar problem

since yesterday my postgres won't take a generated database any more - it
just hangs with full utilisation of CPU power. The do.maintenance hangs,
also a pg_dump I tried hangs.

...

Simple select * queries on the database still work, but nothing else

.................................

>
> Vacuum each table of the affected database separately and see if you can
> isolate the problem.

The tables generated by me ones were unproblematic to vacuum.

> Quite likely you have a corrupted index - in which case drop and
> recreate the index.

How can I find out which indices I have? I am not a postgres professional,
and the \dt command in psql doesn't work anymore (it hangs also).

.................................

> However, if \dt hangs, the problem is probably in a system index;
> pg_class has two indexes: pg_class_oid_index and pg_class_relname_index.

I can do a select * on pg_class, but that's it. Anything else I tried
hangs.

> See if you can do a pg_dump of this database. If you can, backup the
> database itself, pg_dump it, delete it and recreate it from the dump.

I tried to dump it ( pg_dump -t pg_class etcs ), but it hangs immediately.

> If you can't do that, we'll have to try something else...

Seems like that. But I wonder, why. I update my system regularly
(unstable, that's fun ;-). Can a library conflict be the reason for it?
Because I worked with the db one day, and the other day it gave me this
hangs. The problem is, without dumping I would lose some data, and I
wouldn't like that... :-P

Greetings, Sven

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Sven Fischer -- Mülheimer Str. 133, 51469 Bergisch Gladbach, Germany
Tel.: +49-(0)2202-458799 Fax.: +49-(0)89-244310437
sepreh(at)gmx(dot)de

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Oliver Elphick Oliver(dot)Elphick(at)lfix(dot)co(dot)uk
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