Re: invalid page header in block 52979 of relation "pg_attribute"

On Friday 12 November 2004 7:54 am, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 04:29:38PM -0700, Steve Crawford wrote:
> > True. I hadn't come up with a good time to get past that 7.4.1 ->
> > 7.4.2 initdb requirement. I guess I'll have to go with the manual
> > method.
>
> IIRC, the initdb is recommended, but not required. It can be done
> without an initdb too. Check the release notes for more details.
> You may as well jump to the most recent...

Already downloaded - the upgrade is on the todo list.

> > What is the best method to do this? Also, can I safely drop that
> > table and recreate it from a dump file?
>
> Errr, pg_attribute is what holds the information about column
> names, types and other such details. Most of your schema really.
>
> It would need a full restore if you dropped it...

I successfully tested then ran a process to dump the db, drop it, then
restore it. All is fine, now. I think the bad block wasn't used by
anything important as the server continued handling all its work
without problem. The only time this error showed up in the log was
when I tried to query the table or when autovacuum tried to analyze
it.

Fortunately this database dump is only ~300MB so I only had to shut
down for 5 minutes to do the dump/drop/create/restore.

Cheers,
Steve