Crash logs (was RE: full data disk -- any chance of recovery )

Back in the way-back Tom Lane wrote:
>
> Actually, as a developer I would've first wanted to look into the core
> files and try to see why they showed up in the first place.  A gdb stack
> trace would often tell something useful (... if not to you, then to
> someone on the -hackers list ...).  Cleaning up after a problem is fine,
> but don't destroy the evidence until you've learned as much as you can
> towards preventing the problem from happening again.

Well, I have a few core files:
[postgres@pgdb-05 138602992]$ !ls
ls -lt core*
-rw-------    1 postgres gxadmin  13897603 Jan  6 17:04 core.19845.gz
-rw-------    1 postgres gxadmin  24929043 Jan  6 17:02 core.18841.gz
-rw-------    1 postgres gxadmin  17264683 Jan  4 17:15 core.18996.gz
-rw-------    1 postgres gxadmin   5949066 Jan  4 17:13 core.17007.gz
-rw-------    1 postgres gxadmin  24513490 Jan  4 17:12 core.15891.gz
-rw-------    1 postgres gxadmin  24830413 Jan  4 16:38 core.11317.gz

I can probably find a way to put them on our site for ftp retrieval next week, if there is any interest.

It a tribute to postgres that there are so many, so close in time !

Well, ok, it is bad there are crashes but this 7.4 with an early postGIS version (which I think is the real problem --
Iwill bet that we see far fewer crashes with current releases, especially in the postGIS side o' things). But I've seen
otherdatabases crash and either need a manual restart or even a reboot of the afflicted server, and then a while to
recover.Admittedly, this database is a read-only DB with few but large updates. Still -- 2 minutes to recover and be
fatallyslain again !! That's wicked fast. 

Appended below is a snippet from logs for a recent crash (no outside intervention so whatver signals are sent are
eitherpostgres or linux): 

But like I've said, I am reasonably certain that 8.1/postGIS 1.0 will be better and I don't want to waste anyone's time
chasingafter bugs that may have already been swatted. 

Cheers,

Greg Williamson
DBA
GlobeXplorer LLC

Log:
2006-01-06 17:02:22 NOTICE:  AssertionFailedException: Should never reach here: Unknown Precision Model type
encountered
2006-01-06 17:02:22 ERROR:  GEOS Intersection() threw an error!
2006-01-06 17:02:23 NOTICE:  IllegalArgumentException: LinearRing not closed
2006-01-06 17:02:23 ERROR:  Couldnt convert the postgis geometry to GEOS!
2006-01-06 17:02:23 NOTICE:  IllegalArgumentException: LinearRing not closed
2006-01-06 17:02:23 ERROR:  Couldnt convert the postgis geometry to GEOS!
2006-01-06 17:02:25 LOG:  server process (PID 18841) was terminated by signal 11
2006-01-06 17:02:25 LOG:  terminating any other active server processes
2006-01-06 17:02:25 WARNING:  terminating connection because of crash of another server process
DETAIL:  The postmaster has commanded this server process to roll back the current transaction and exit, because
anotherserver process exited abnormally and possibly corrupted shared memory.