Re: power failure....

Tom Allison <tom@tacocat.net> writes:
> 2007-11-30 19:35:20 EST PANIC:  could not locate a valid checkpoint
> record

Ugh :-(.  pg_resetxlog should get you back into the database, but it's
anybody's guess whether and how badly the contents will be corrupted.
I would recommend trying a dump/reload and also doing any manual
consistency crosschecks you can think of.

> postgres version 8.2 sitting on a Reiser FS on RAID1....

Better take a second look at your disk hardware configuration.  At least
in theory, this Can't Happen if your disk hardware is handling fsync
honestly.

            regards, tom lane