Re: Corruption of files in PostgreSQL

Greg Smith wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Jun 2007, Paolo Bizzarri wrote:
>
>> On 6/4/07, Scott Marlowe <smarlowe(at)g2switchworks(dot)com> wrote:
>>> http://lwn.net/Articles/215868/
>>> documents a bug in the 2.6 linux kernel that can result in corrupted
>>> files if there are a lot of processes accessing it at once.
>>
>> in fact, we were using a 2.6.12 kernel. Can this be a problem?
>
> That particular problem appears to be specific to newer kernels so I
> wouldn't think it's related to your issue.

That is not entirely correct. The problem was present all the way back
to the 2.5 kernels, before the 2.6 kernels were released. However,
there was an update to the 2.6.18/19 kernels that made this problem much
more likely to bite. There were reports of data loss for many people
running on older 2.6 kernels that mysteriously went away after updating
to post 2.6.19 kernels (or in the case of redhat, the updated 2.6.9-44
or so kernels, which backported the fix.)

So, it IS possible that it's the kernel, but not likely. I'm still
betting on a bad RAID controller or something like that. But updating
the kernel probably wouldn't be a bad idea.