Re: Can't recover data from a .tar.gz file which was backed up using COPY BINARY command

Hi Matheus

I get the following error when trying your command:

ERROR: COPY BINARY: file signature not recognized

*From:* Matheus de Oliveira [mailto:matioli(dot)matheus(at)gmail(dot)com]
*Sent:* Thursday, March 01, 2012 11:56 AM
*To:* Khangelani Gama
*Cc:* pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
*Subject:* Re: [ADMIN] Can't recover data from a .tar.gz file which was
backed up using COPY BINARY command

Have you tried the above?

COPY BINARY dailybackup FROM <uncompressed file>

If so, what happened?

--
Matheus de Oliveira

Bacharelado em Ciências de Computação
Laboratório de Computação de Alto Desempenho -
LCAD<http://www.lcad.icmc.usp.br/>
Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação -
ICMC<http://www.icmc.usp.br/>
Universidade de São Paulo - USP <http://www.sc.usp.br/>

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 4:51 AM, Khangelani Gama <kgama(at)argility(dot)com> wrote:

Someone in our company wrote a script that backs up data from a certain
table, that person left the company and no one is able to figure it out.
Part of this script has something like, look at the COPY BINARY command
just below:

EXPORTFILE=${EXPORTFILE}.${AUD_UP_TO}_${MAX_AUDIT}

*$PSQL -c "COPY BINARY dailybackup TO '$EF_PATH/$EXPORTFILE';"*

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then

cd $EF_PATH

tar cvzf ${EXPORTFILE}.tar.gz ${EXPORTFILE}

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then

echo -e "Error while compressing tar file : " >
/tmp/backup.trickle.state

echo `date` >> /tmp/backup.trickle.state

fi

echo "Backup to backup disk successful"

echo "Update trickle checkpoint"

${ANT} run -Dclass=ucs.instore.ejb.system.SetTrickleCheckpoint
-Darg1=${MAX_AUDIT}

I tried to untar the file which went through fine, but now inside the file
there is funny characters, see below:

PGBCOPY

ÿ^M

^(at)^D^C^B^A^@^(at)^@^(at)^@^(at)^@^(at)^R^@^D^(at)~UIS^@ÿÿ
^(at)^@^(at)1~1~1^D^@^É^(at)^@^D^(at)^@^(at)^@^(at)ÿÿ^K^@^(at)^@day_endÿÿ^K^(at)^@^(at)central^H^@wIôðå϶Aÿÿ¶^B^(at)^@<?xml
version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>^M

I am aware of the following format, but can’t figure out how many
characters should I specify and this backup system doesn’t use pg_dump
command?

COPY [ BINARY ] table_name [ WITH OIDS ]

FROM { 'filename' | STDIN }

[ [USING] DELIMITERS 'delimiter' ]

[ WITH NULL AS 'null string' ]

Thanks in advanced

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