Re: Cluster recovery - FATAL: database files are incompatible with server. Different PG_CONTROL_VERSION for cluster and server.

Thanks for the doc on pg_resetxlog. Will try it next week when I'm
back from Easter holiday, first backuping $PGDATA.

Most of my databases are stored in a default tablespace I defined on a
different disk than that of my PG installation (and $PGDATA): could I
just reinstall PG and then re-link it with my databases on that disk?

2014-04-17 20:29 GMT-04:00 Adrian Klaver <adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com>:
> On 04/17/2014 01:29 PM, Guillaume Drolet wrote:
>>
>> Dear list users,
>>
>> For some tests, I installed a new cluster with different parameters
>> than the ones I had used a while ago to create the cluster I use for
>> my day-to-day activities (let's call it my main cluster). I used
>> initdb --no-locale -E UTF8 -D <new_data_dir>. Then I used pg_ctl -D
>> <new_data_dir> to start my new cluster. So far so good.
>>
>> Then, I realized that I wanted to add a database superuser with the
>> option -U to initdb so I decided to delete the newly created cluster.
>> Instead, I mistakenly deleted the data directory of my main cluster
>> (doh!), using Shift-Delete. I recovered the deleted data directory
>> using Panda Recovery Tool and copied it back into its location (the
>> location pointed to by $PGDATA).
>>
>> Now for the real problems: if I go in pgAdmin and try to connect to my
>> cluster, I get the "server not listening" message. I also tried going
>> to the Services and restarting postgresql but it says it is already
>> stopped and if I try to start it, I get a message that it has started
>> but then stopped because it was unused.
>>
>> If I try pg_ctl start, I get this message (my translation from
>> French): FATAL: database files are incompatible with server. DETAIL:
>> Database cluster was initialized with a PG_CONTROL_VERSION ? 16795209
>> while the server was compiled with a PG_CONTROL_VERSION ? 937. HINT:
>> Looks like you need initdb.
>>
>> I really don't know what to do and would appreciate any help, if
>> anything can be done to recover my databases. My PG version is 9.3.3
>> on a Windows 7 64-bit OS.
>
>
> Further investigation found pg_resetxlog:
>
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/app-pgresetxlog.html
>
> I have never used it, so all I can do is point to the docs. I would say that
> if you go this route make a copy of your $PGDATA in another location for
> safe keeping in the event things go wrong.
>
>
>
>>
>> Best regards and many thanks for your advice,
>>
>> Guillaume
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Adrian Klaver
> adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com