Re: Recovering a database in danger of transaction wrap-around

I am unable to run pg_dump because even though I can successfully start the
postmaster, every time I try to do something I receive the warning that the
postmaster will not allow any activity because we crossed the minimum
transaction threshold. pg_dump dies almost immediately:

Starting dump to
/vsa/backups/db/20080125170401.vsa_pgsql_db_bak.gz...pg_dump: [archiver
(db)] connection to database "vsa" failed: FATAL: database is not
accepting commands to avoid wraparound data loss in database "vsa"
HINT: Stop the postmaster and use a standalone backend to vacuum database
"vsa".
The backup completed with the condition coded = 0

Any other suggestions?
___________________________________________________________________________________

Steven Rosenstein
IT Architect/Developer | IBM Virtual Server Administration
Voice/FAX: 845-689-2064 | Cell: 646-345-6978 | Tieline: 930-6001
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Email: srosenst @ us.ibm.com

"Learn from the mistakes of others because you can't live long enough to
make them all yourself." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

From: Tino Schwarze <postgresql(at)tisc(dot)de>

To: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org

Date: 01/25/2008 02:27 PM

Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Recovering a database in danger of transaction wrap-around

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 02:10:06PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:

> > I used lsof to monitor which files the backend was actually working on.
It
> > took two of the four days for it to vacuum a single table with 43
> > one-gigabyte extents. I have one table with over 300 extents. I'm
looking
> > at a vacuum process which can ultimately take weeks (if not months) to
> > complete.
>
> Yipes. You are just using plain VACUUM, right, not VACUUM FULL?
> Have you checked that vacuum_cost_delay isn't enabled?

pg_dump/pg_restore may be a lot faster here - we're in an emergency
situation anyway and after that, the whole DB will be clean again, all
indices rebuilt nicely, no bloat in the tables.

Tino.

--
www.craniosacralzentrum.de
www.spiritualdesign-chemnitz.de

Tino Schwarze * Lortzingstraße 21 * 09119 Chemnitz

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