Re: pg_restore recovery from error.

Hi Vishal,

Unfortunately, this is not an option for me, I'm working with a file that
has 400505294 of 400513265 bytes that it can read successfully, however at
that spot in the file, there is a block that is 3870 bytes long as opposed
to the expected 4096 bytes. Running the command you gave me as an option
still causes that point to fail.

Over the last few hours I've been tracing out pg_restore.c and trying to
narrow down how it filters through alot of the data, most of it I
understand, but there is one thing I think I'm missing and maybe one of you
nice developers can point me in the right direction.

I've been table to trace down the code such that the _PrintTocData and
_PrintData functions in the pg_backup_custom.c file are where I need to be
to understand more about the data returns. I've been able to add in some
print statements to pg_backup_custom.c such that:

---- cut --- _PrintData
cnt = fread(in, 1, blkLen, AH->FH);
if (cnt != blkLen)
die_horribly(AH, modulename,
"could not read data block -- expected
%lu, got %lu\n",
(unsigned long) blkLen,
(unsigned long) cnt);

printf("%d - %d - %d\n", cnt, blkLen, ctx->filePos);

ctx->filePos += blkLen;
---- cut ----

spits out:

...
3870 - 4096 - 400505294

Telling me that it's only got ~ 6 - 7 kbytes of compressed data to
retrieve (yes I realize that this is a small remaining number but it works
out to about 50 tables with missing data).

What I'd like to do is somehow modify pg_restore such that it skips that
offending block and continues on with the next one, however each time I do
so I get either a loop that seems to indicate something got stuck, or a
core file :>. This is telling me that even a compressed form of a pg_dump
file is not necessarily going to be in a number of smaller files all
grouped into one tar when using the custom dump method. This also means
that I have to somehow find the header to the next table and skip any
remaining records within that table structure (which I can accept), but
it's the data in those remaining tables that I need to dig out, anyone have
an idea on how to skip to the next table ignoring any records that are on
the other side of that offending block (including the offending record).

At 02:46 PM 6/15/2004, V i s h a l Kashyap @ [Sai Hertz And Control
Systems] wrote:
>Dear Chris ,
>
>>pg_restore: [custom archiver] could not read data block -- expected 4096,
>>got 3870
>>pg_restore: *** aborted because of error
>>
>> It appears some of the data itself is not readable, which is fine, but
>> I'd like it to skip past this table and move onto the next one. Has
>> anyone got any ideas as to where I should look for that?
>
>
>Make a plain text file out of your archive and then edit apropriately
>for desired results
>
>I dont remember the way it could be done but something live
>
>pg_restore -U <BOGUS> >> my_database.sql
>cat my_database.sql
>
>Drawbacks :
>1. Large database would be headache
>2. Blobs would not be restored
>
>
>--
>Regards,
>Vishal Kashyap
>Director / Lead Software Developer,
>Sai Hertz And Control Systems Pvt Ltd,
>http://saihertz.rediffblogs.com
>Yahoo IM: mailforvishal[ a t ]yahoo.com
>