Randall Wilson <rwilson(at)earthcomber(dot)com> writes:
> We've got a PostgreSQL 8.1.11 database that started displaying these
> error messages almost immediately AFTER it was restored.
> ...
> Is there any way to figure out where the 0x8b character is?
Hmm, did you perhaps change the database encoding from its previous
value? The most likely bet is that the bad encoding is arriving from a
client, which is evidently expecting to send something other than UTF8
but not bothering to set client_encoding to tell what.
regards, tom lane