For TOM LANE:
In response to your comments, there are no relations of any kind shown.
Your assumption was correct: /bup/previous/var/lib/pgsql is the rsync
maintained file backup of the entire postgresql tree.
There were no transactions for postmaster to have had to deal with over
the days involved.
I've followed your requirement that I restore the whole tree after
reinstalling postgresql and I have repeated this process from scratch
over 5 days of restores with no change in the results reported.
Seems to me that only the table data should be restored after postgresql
is initialized. I'm at a loss because i just don't know where the data
which generates tables resides in the file system.
And it has occurred to me that when restoring from a file system some
'trigger' might be required to wake up the server so it could recognize
its tables with the database?
I any event, I am about to bring this server up to full cooker level
which has been known to clear out cobwebs from time to time. I'll
complete that before once more re-installing postgresql.
George