Re: recover corrupt DB?

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On Thursday 23 April 2009 18:30:27 Dan Armbrust wrote:
>> I had a test system (read as not backed up, sigh) which had the disk
>> go full while PostgreSQL was loaded, consequently, PostgreSQL will no
>> longer start.
>>
>> It is logging an error about detecting an invalid shutdown, trying to
>> replay something, and then an error about not being able to open a
>> file it is looking for.
>
> Knowing what file would help analyze this. In general, pg_resetxlog would be
> the tool to try here. Don't panic yet. ;-)

I've been wondering about this for a while. Why does Pg end up with the
database in an unusable, unrecoverable state after a disk-full error? Is
there no way it can efficiently defend against issues writing to the
WAL? Is it, in fact, issues with appending to the current WAL segment
that're the problem anyway?

This may come up even on fairly well managed databases if users have
direct access. To me, with a largely user-and-admin perspective, it
seems like something that really should be handled a bit more cleanly.

--
Craig Ringer