Re: broke postgres, how to fix??

Thank you everybody for your help,

This problem has been resolved, in part to your insights.

All the best,
-JD

On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 4:31 AM, Albe Laurenz <laurenz(dot)albe(at)wien(dot)gv(dot)at>wrote:

> JD Wong wrote:
> >>> Hi Adrian, yes I completely copied the config-file and data directories
> >>> over.
>
> >> That's guaranteed to break everything badly.
>
> > Even if I "read only style" copied the files? Do you mind elaborating on
> why this happens? ( or point
> > me to relevant documentation )
>
> The problem is that if you copy the files of a running database,
> these files will change while they are being copied.
> This can result in unusable contents.
> Also, to function properly, the different files
> in a PostgreSQL data directory must be consistent with each other.
> If you copy one file after the other, files that are copied later
> might belong to a different state of the database than earlier files.
>
> You either have to shutdown the database before copying
> (a filesystem level offline backup) or use some instantaneous
> snapshotting technique that your file system might offer.
> In the latter case PostgreSQL should perform crash recovery
> and eventually reach a consistent state.
>
> Yours,
> Laurenz Albe
>