Re: Invalid page header

Ian Burrell <imb(at)rentrak(dot)com> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> It would probably be worth your while to look at the damaged page with
>> pg_filedump before you zap it. The symptoms of hardware misfeasance and
>> software errors are enough different that you can often tell which
>> theory to believe by examining the bits.

> I used pg_filedump on a backup of the database files. The block looks
> like it is mostly zero bytes with a few x02 bytes thrown to just be
> confusing.

My interpretation of that would be a hardware glitch. A software
problem would be more likely to look like copying the wrong data
into the block, or possibly zeroing out the block when it shouldn't
--- but the sprinkling of x02's rules out a misaimed memset().

Time to break out the RAM and disk test programs ...

regards, tom lane