Re: vaccum db fail

Matthew Terenzio <webmaster(at)localnotion(dot)com> writes:
> Trying vacuumdb eventuallydisplays this:
> ERROR: catalog is missing 3 attribute(s) for relid 31457
> vacuumdb: vacuum databasename failed

> There is another thread which states this is a corrupted systems
> catalog. Is this definitely the case? Does it mean I need to re-build
> the database? Re-install?

You've definitely got some problems in the pg_attribute catalog.
If you are lucky, reindexing pg_attribute will get you out of this.
Otherwise it's time to initdb and reload (or at least drop that one
database, recreate it, reload it). I wouldn't trust half measures such
as dropping the one known-corrupt table, because the odds are that more
rows in pg_attribute got hit than just the ones reported in the first
failure.

regards, tom lane