Re: pg_dump problem

Noel Faux <noel(dot)faux(at)med(dot)monash(dot)edu(dot)au> writes:
> The erorr throw is:
> pg_dump: message type 0x44 arrived from server while idle
> pg_dump: dumpClasses(): SQL command failed
> pg_dump: Error message from server: server closed the connection
> unexpectedly
> This probably means the server terminated abnormally
> before or while processing the request.
> pg_dump: The command was: FETCH 100 FROM _pg_dump_cursor

What shows up in the postmaster log when this happens?

If you're not keeping the postmaster's log output, now would be a good
time to start. Personally I'd suggest configuring it to log to syslog;
you'll need to enable this in postgresql.conf and possibly adjust your
syslogd configuration to determine exactly where Postgres messages go.
If that seems like too much trouble, adjust the init.d start script to
send the postmaster's stderr to some file instead of /dev/null.

regards, tom lane