pg_restore: could not close data file: Success

I'm trying to restore a backup on a different machine and it terminates
with the not really helpful messages:

pg_restore: [directory archiver] could not close data file: Success
pg_restore: [parallel archiver] a worker process died unexpectedly

The backup was made with

pg_dump --compress=5 -v -Fd -f "$dirname" -j 4 $db

(so it's in directory format)

The restore command was

pg_restore -c --if-exists -d $db -j 4 -v $dirname

(I would use -C, but due to suboptimal partitioning I have to use a
different tablspace, so I need to create $db before the restore)

Both machines are running Ubuntu 18.04 and PostgreSQL is version 11.7
from the pgdg repo.

The error happens while restoring the data for the tables.

My guess is that maybe one of the data files is damaged ("Success"
probably means that errno is 0, so it wasn't a system call that failed,
but something in the application). Does that sound plausible or should I
look somewhere else? A web search returned nothing relevant.

hp

--
_ | Peter J. Holzer | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) | |
| | | hjp(at)hjp(dot)at | -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/ | http://www.hjp.at/ | challenge!"