Re: postgres 8.2.6 core dump when initialising.

Darren Reed <darrenr+postgres(at)fastmail(dot)net> writes:
> Some time ago I saw this message:
> ERROR: index "pg_depend_reference_index" contains unexpected zero page
> at block 23
> HINT: Please REINDEX it.
> ERROR: index "table_p_hash_idx" contains unexpected zero page at block 7
> HINT: Please REINDEX it.

[ squint... ] If something is randomly zeroing out pages, and it
happens to hit pg_class, that could explain your troubles. Maybe
you are dealing with a kernel bug or flaky hardware.

>> It might be useful if we could look at a pg_filedump dump of your
>> pg_class table, too.

> How do I know which one is pg_class?

It'd be $PGDATA/base/NNN/1259 where NNN is the OID of the broken
database. With a dead system the easiest way to find out that OID
is to look at the text file $PGDATA/global/pg_database --- the
first number after a database's name is its OID.

I find that "pg_filedump -i -f FILENAME" gives the most useful output.

regards, tom lane