Re: Vacuum error message

Solved. It was a combination of OS corruption and limits on max_fsm_pages being too small.
Thanks for all of your help. It was a learning experience.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Lane [mailto:tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us]
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2012 10:51 AM
To: Raymond McKolay
Cc: Kevin Grittner; pgsql-novice(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [NOVICE] Vacuum error message

Raymond McKolay <RMcKolay(at)brittenbanners(dot)com> writes:
> I took the files from the directory they were in and changed the path.
> I guess I don't understand how to copy the contents of the file to accomplish what you are asking.
> I presumed that by changing the path of the files the vacuum operation would either skip them or error out saying that they were missing.

I'd have expected a missing-files failure, too. Are you sure the error message was the same thing for the same files? If this is a filesystem corruption, it's quite possible it affects more than one file. There's no very good reason to assume VACUUM would visit the files in the same order every time, either, so it's possible it would fail on some other table before getting to this one.

But anyway, what Kevin and I were suggesting was that you try to duplicate the files, using "cp" on the command line, or Duplicate in the Finder.

> I am pretty sure that a vacuum full is eventually what needs to happen since the DB contains useless records and I need the disk space given back to the OS.
> But then again I'm no expert with postgres so I am only guessing.

The error message you have told us about is *entirely* unrelated to needing extra disk space. It's about being unable to read a file that is already there.

regards, tom lane