Re: How to reindex when unable to open relation?

Darren Reed <darrenr+postgres(at)fastmail(dot)net> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> ...
>> There's no info here to suggest exactly what went wrong; Darren, do you
>> want to fess up to any hardware problems, tripped-over power cords, or
>> such? What PG version is this anyway?

> This is 8.2.6... and I'm starting to believe the hardware is just borked,
> with all of the other troubles I've had.

Well, there are no known data-loss bugs in 8.2.6, with of course the
operative word being "known" ...

> In an earlier bringup of the database, I received an error intended for
> Linux kernels on a BSD box about a page not being zero...

Yeah, I know exactly which message you mean; it was a defense against a
bug that was present for a relatively short time in a few Linux kernel
versions, and could only be exposed on multi-CPU hardware even so.
If you're seeing that and other problems on a BSD kernel then I agree
that hardware issues seem like a likely explanation. Have you tried
running memtest86 and any other hardware diagnostics you can lay your
hands on?

regards, tom lane