Cannot start Postgres- FATAL: invalid cache id: 19

On Wednesday, December 01, 2010 9:58 AM Vick Khera wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Jolles, Peter M (GE Energy) wrote:
> > 2010-11-29 12:39:17 EST HINT:  Stop the postmaster and use a
> > standalone backend to vacuum that database.
>
> so did you do what the HINT told you to do? does it still not startup?

When I realized what was happening I stopped the server and attempted to restart it after making a backup. I was under the impression the database had to be able to start up in order to vacuum it. If there is a way to do it with the database not running, I don't know how to do that.

> > I had multiple auto-vacuum instances running, but it looks like they
> > were unable to keep up.
> >
> are there any log lines complaining that autovacuum terminated any jobs?
> anything from autovacuum?

I don't see anything in the log that the autovacuum specifically terminated any jobs or gave any error. Approximately 4 hours before the database started refusing transactions the following was present, but I wasn't able to shut everything down in time:

EST WARNING: database "fps_data" must be vacuumed within 11000000 transactions

I know now that I'm going to have to slow down the transaction rate in order to let the autovacuum keep up, but at this point I am just trying to salvage the data present in the database.

Thanks,
Peter Jolles