Re: Postgres "invalid page header"

Carl,
>
> Hubert,
>
> I too have noticed such an issue
>
> Would you be willing to try to load a large table (from a SQL file).
> It reliably demonstrates the behavior "invalid page header"
> after completion (for me)

Up to now, my phenomenon is
a) described as in my posting below The error occurs irregularly, mostly
when UPDATinig large (10 mill. entries) tables, especially when doing
several million UPDATES in ONE transaction. After that, I reduced the
transaction size to < 300000 updates per transaction, and the error
still occurs.
b) Meanwhile I have "managed" to reproduce the error on a smaller scale
rather reliably. (somewhat similar to your scenario)
First, I INSERTed ca. 3 mill. rows into a database in transaction
packets of 100 each. So far, all fine. But when doing the same job
simultaneously on two databases in the same cluster on the same server,
I got the error.
c) I conclude: The issue is not an issue of too big transactions.
However, might it be an issue of coordinating several databases on the
same cluster?

>
> It seems to me that while there are WAL logs being flushed, a certain
> type of failed SQL insert will cause a page to be marked wrong.
>
> I have not been able to nail down the problem but confirmation that
> another user can replicate the problem with the exact dataset would
> greatly improve the ability to get this fixed.
>

I'd like to test my server(s) with your data, so send'em.

> BTW I too am using XFS so that may also be the culprit. any non XFS
> users care to try?

I want to test with a different storage device but i haven't one yet.

Greetings,

Hubert

> C.
>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> I am working with 7.4.1 under Linux (SuSE 8.1) The server is a HP
>> ProLiant DL 380-G3, 2x Intel Pentium4-Xeon, 2.8 GHz, 4 GB memory and a
>> RAID 5 system with ca. 500 GB diskspace (xfs file system)
>>
>>
>> When doing big transactions or changes (UPDATE several million rows in
>> one step) on a database with ca. 50 GB diskspace and ca 15 million
>> entries, PostGIS and lots of indexes, I get errors like
>>
>> ERROR: invalid page header in block 582024 of relation ...
>>
>> The error does not occur regularly. It seems to me that the error is
>> related with heavy load and heavy I/O . CPU and memory does not seem
>> the problem, according to my hotsanic tools.
>>
>> I have worked through
>>
>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2003-11/msg01288.php
>> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-admin/2003-09/msg00423.php
>> http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=20030922162322.E12708%40quartz.newn.cam.ac.uk&rnum=8&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dpg_filedump%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26selm%3D20030922162322.E12708%2540quartz.newn.cam.ac.uk%26rnum%3D8
>>
>>
>>
>> which suggest to me that I have run into hardware trouble (disk?
>> memory?!) But I supposed that my server was not SO bad for this
>> database application...
>>
>> How to fix that? (I mean - not to repair the tables or pages but to
>> get a stable one? ) Trying another sotrage hardware?!

--
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Dr.-Ing. Hubert Fröhlich
Bezirksfinanzdirektion München
Alexandrastr. 3, D-80538 München, GERMANY
Tel. :+49 (0)89 / 2190 - 2980
Fax :+49 (0)89 / 2190 - 2997
hubert dot froehlich at bvv dot bayern dot de