Re: RCA for MemoryContextAlloc: invalid request size(Known Issue)

On Wed, Jan 07, 2009 at 06:07:02AM -0800, yogvinder wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I am having multiple postgresql 7.3(pretty old version now) on rhel4
> servers.

Not just "pretty old," but past any community support. You'll need to
build and implement an upgrade strategy along with doing your upgrade.

> I am getting the error MemoryContextAlloc: invalid request size on
> many of these servers from time to time.
>
> On crawling through net, I have found that its because of some bad
> word value in a variable length field which implies database
> corruption. A possible solution to recover database is by deleting
> the corrupted row and then continuing till all the bad rows are
> deleted.
>
> My Queries: 1) What is the root cause? Why database is getting
> corrupted.

The root cause is that whoever was responsible for this cluster failed
to upgrade to a supported version. Don't Do That Again :)

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david(at)fetter(dot)org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david(dot)fetter(at)gmail(dot)com

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