Re: missing chunk number 0 for toast value

We are using version 8.3.1. And to be precise, when I started the vacuum
(analyze), I started it as a cron job to run daily around midnight. The
next day I came in and checked on it and it was still running. Not thinking
that it would take more than a full 24 hours to run, I let it be, and the
next day I came in and the server started acting weird. I believe the
vacuum process continued to run, and a second vacuum process was started.
The server became unstable, and refused incoming connections. At which
point, I killed all vacuum processes, and restarted postgresql. I believe
it was somewhere during this process that the database became corrupted. I
am not certain what happens when two vacuum processes run at the same time.
That may have been the problem, or it may not have. Or it may have been
that I killed the vacuum process in the middle of what it was doing. One
way or another, the problem that we have now, is that we are unable to get a
dump of the database for backups, and the database seems less stable than it
was previously (dropping connections, and refusing connections seemingly at
random).

BJ

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 2:26 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> "BJ Taylor" <btaylor(at)propertysolutions(dot)com> writes:
> > Our database seems to have been corrupted. It is a heavily used
> database,
> > and went several months without any type of vacuuming. When we finally
> > realized that it wasn't being vacuumed, we started the process, but the
> > process never successfully completed, and our database has never been the
> > same since.
>
> What PG version is this? Exactly what do you mean by "never
> successfully completed"?
>
> regards, tom lane
>