Re: [HACKERS] ALTER TABLE .. ALTER COLUMN .. ERROR: attribute .. haswrong type

On Tue, Jan 03, 2017 at 02:32:36PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> Justin Pryzby <pryzby@telsasoft.com> writes:
> >>>> I can cause the error at will on the existing table,
> 
> That's good news, at least.
> 
> 1. Please trigger it with "\set VERBOSITY verbose" enabled, so we can see
> the exact source location --- there are a couple of instances of that
> text.

ts=# begin; drop view umts_eric_ch_switch_view, eric_umts_rnc_utrancell_view, umts_eric_cell_integrity_view; ALTER
TABLEeric_umts_rnc_utrancell_metrics ALTER COLUMN PMSUMPACKETLATENCY_000 TYPE BIGINT USING
PMSUMPACKETLATENCY_000::BIGINT;                                    
 
BEGIN
DROP VIEW
ERROR:  42804: attribute 424 has wrong type
DETAIL:  Table has type smallint, but query expects integer.
LOCATION:  ExecEvalScalarVar, execQual.c:660

> 2. Even better would be a stack trace for the call to errfinish,
> https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Generating_a_stack_trace_of_a_PostgreSQL_backend

#1  0x00000000006dd39f in exec_simple_query (query_string=0x1fc5fb0 "begin;")   at postgres.c:932       dest =
DestRemote      oldcontext = 0x1f3b100       parsetree_list = 0x1fc69f0       save_log_statement_stats = 0 '\000'
was_logged= 0 '\000'       msec_str = "\360:\235\213\377\177\000\000`<\235\213\377\177\000\000\260_\374\001", '\000'
<repeats11 times>       __func__ = "exec_simple_query"
 

and then

#1  0x00000000006dd39f in exec_simple_query (   query_string=0x1fc5fb0 "ALTER TABLE eric_umts_rnc_utrancell_metrics
ALTERCOLUMN PMSUMPACKETLATENCY_000 TYPE BIGINT USING PMSUMPACKETLATENCY_000::BIGINT;")   at postgres.c:932       dest =
DestRemote      oldcontext = 0x1f3b100       parsetree_list = 0x1fc6fc8       save_log_statement_stats = 0 '\000'
was_logged= 0 '\000'       msec_str = "\360:\235\213\377\177\000\000`<\235\213\377\177\000\000\260_\374\001", '\000'
<repeats11 times>       __func__ = "exec_simple_query"
 

then

#1  0x00000000005d0e30 in ExecEvalScalarVar (exprstate=<value optimized out>,    econtext=<value optimized out>,
isNull=<valueoptimized out>,    isDone=<value optimized out>) at execQual.c:655       attnum = 424       __func__ =
"ExecEvalScalarVar"

> 3. It's pretty hard to see how you'd reach any of these places for an
> ALTER COLUMN TYPE on a simple table.  Has the table got rules, triggers,
> default values?  Could we see "\d+" output for it?

triggers and defaults, yes.
sect_id                                     | integer                  | not nullstart_time
    | timestamp with time zone | not nullsite_id                                     | integer                  | not
nullinterval_seconds                           | smallint                 | not nullutrancell
       | text                     | not nullnedn                                        | text                     |
notnullrnc_id                                      | integer                  | not nulldevice_id
           | integer                  | not nullpmcelldowntimeauto                          | smallint
|pmcelldowntimeman                           | smallint                 | pmchswitchattemptfachura                    |
smallint                | pmchswitchattempturafach                    | smallint                 | 
 
...
Triggers:   eric_umts_rnc_utrancell_insert_trigger BEFORE INSERT ON eric_umts_rnc_utrancell_metrics FOR EACH ROW
EXECUTEPROCEDURE eric_umts_rnc_utrancell_insert_function()
 
Number of child tables: 3 (Use \d+ to list them.)

I'll send the rest of \d if you really want but:

ts=# SELECT COUNT(1) FROM pg_attribute WHERE attrelid='eric_umts_rnc_utrancell_metrics'::regclass;
count | 1116

Justin