Re: [GENERAL] Forgot to dump old data before re-installing machine

Tom Lane wrote:
> What would work better is to add some code that checks whether
> pg_control_version looks like the byte-swap of a small number,
> and prints a suitably modified error message if so.

Here is a possible patch.  Example output:

$ pg-install/bin/postgres -D pg-install/var/data
FATAL:  database files are incompatible with server
DETAIL:  The database cluster was initialized with PG_CONTROL_VERSION 1090715648 (0x41030000), but the server was
compiledwith PG_CONTROL_VERSION 833 (0x00000341). 
HINT:  This could be a mismatched byte order.  It looks like you need to initdb.

I didn't follow how the user got into this mess, so I don't know whether the
suggestion "you need to initdb" is appropriate.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/