Re: BUG #5055: Invalid page header error

From: Ron Mayer <rm_pg(at)cheapcomplexdevices(dot)com>
To: Craig Ringer <craig(at)postnewspapers(dot)com(dot)au>
Cc: postgres bee <postgres_bee(at)live(dot)com>, pgsql-bugs(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: BUG #5055: Invalid page header error
Date: 2009-09-16 00:49:38
Message-ID: 4AB03622.5030708@cheapcomplexdevices.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-bugs

Craig Ringer wrote:
> PostgreSQL has to trust the hardware and the OS to do their jobs. If the
> OS is, unbeknownst to PostgreSQL, flipping the high bit in any byte

Might not even be the OS - it could be the stars (through cosmic rays).

http://www.eetimes.com/news/98/1012news/ibm.html
'"This clearly indicates that because of cosmic rays,
for every 256 Mbytes of memory, you'll get one soft
error a month," said Tim Dell, senior design
engineer for IBM Microelectronics. '

> The RAID controller might be "helpfully" "fixing" parity errors
> in a RAID 5 volume using garbage being returned by a failing disk
> during periodic RAID scrubbing.

If your raid controller doesn't have ECC memory, and if IBM's
right about those soft error stats, it might be doing more
harm than good.

In response to

Browse pgsql-bugs by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Robert Haas 2009-09-16 00:54:41 Re: BUG #5058: [jdbc] Silent failure with executeUpdate()
Previous Message Craig Ringer 2009-09-16 00:23:27 Re: BUG #5055: Invalid page header error