Re: backend corruption

"Brett W. McCoy" <bmccoy@chapelperilous.net> writes:
> On Sat, 6 Jan 2001, George Johnson wrote:
>> So basically, I've wiped all my databases, it looks like, and no, there is
>> no directory/structure which atomically can be called "your database", other
>> than the ENTIRE data/base directory.

> Sure there is -- under my $PGHOME/data/base, each separate database on my
> system is a sub-directory, which contain the system dictionaries, tables,
> indexes, etc.

Yeah, but those files are only half the truth.  The other half lives in
pg_log and the installation-wide tables (pg_database, etc).  George is
correct: you cannot recover using only the contents of $PGDATA/base/foo.
You really need all of $PGDATA.

I think that under 7.1, pg_log is not so critical anymore, but I'm not
sure.  Vadim, any comment?

            regards, tom lane