Re: how to recover after harddisk error

"Peter Alberer" <h9351252(at)obelix(dot)wu-wien(dot)ac(dot)at> writes:
> 2003-02-26 09:03:06 [1291] DEBUG: open of
> /usr/local/pgsql/data/pg_xlog/0000001A000000C9 (log file 26, segment
> 201) failed
> : No such file or directory
> 2003-02-26 09:03:06 [1291] DEBUG: invalid primary checkpoint record
> 2003-02-26 09:03:06 [1291] DEBUG: open of
> /usr/local/pgsql/data/pg_xlog/0000001A000000C8 (log file 26, segment
> 200) failed
> : No such file or directory
> 2003-02-26 09:03:06 [1291] DEBUG: invalid secondary checkpoint record
> 2003-02-26 09:03:06 [1291] FATAL 2: unable to locate a valid
> checkpoint record

Assuming you haven't wiped the old database directory yet...

What file name(s) are actually present in /usr/local/pgsql/data/pg_xlog/
? What does pg_controldata show --- do the other fields of pg_control
look sane?

pg_resetxlog would have allowed you to restart, but at the price of
losing any consistency guarantees about the results of
recently-committed transactions. So I consider it a very last resort.
What I'd like to understand first is why the system couldn't restart
normally.

regards, tom lane