Re: my postgres is dead. need help!

Hi Scott,

It recovered. Amazing, although I don't know
why it got to that (broken) state. I am fairly
new at this job and I have never met my predecessor,
so that I don't have much sense of history. But
I have a new machine on which I have installed
8.2.4 and the project to move the data is under
way. Thanks for your comment.

Tena Sakai
tsakai(at)gallo(dot)ucsf(dot)edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Marlowe [mailto:scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com]
Sent: Fri 7/27/2007 6:16 PM
To: Tena Sakai
Cc: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] my postgres is dead. need help!

On 7/27/07, Tena Sakai <tsakai(at)gallo(dot)ucsf(dot)edu> wrote:

> My postgres (v 7.1.4, I think) did not come up upon reboot.
> I have tried to use startup script called postgresql in
> /etc/rc.d/init.d directory, but it reports FATAL when I
> try to stop postmaster.

PostgreSQL versions that old WILL EAT YOUR DATA.

Not if, just when. If it comes back up, get a good backup and start
planning your migration to something newer, prefereably 8.2.4

> LOG: redo starts at 1F8/D6060064
> FATAL: the database system is starting up

This is normal. Let it finish recovery. If it logs something more
fatal messages saying it couldn't startup, then it's time to restore
from backups.

P.s. How old is the system you're running this on? I'm guessing from
around the RedHat 5 era?