We have a few tables that seem to have suffered some kind of
corruption in their TOAST files. Symptoms include:
+ Runaway CPU usage during VACUUM ANALYZE (load average
spikes of 20x normal for 10-15 minutes at a time) and
more rarely during other operations
+ Recurring messages of "ERROR: Parent tuple was not found"
during VACUUM FULL
We have upgraded from 7.2.1 to 7.2.3 without apparent effect. Now
what I would like to try is:
1. pg_dump the table
2. truncate the table
3. VACUUM FULL (is this necessary?)
4. reload from pg_dump file
However, due to the very large number of foreign key constraints into
this table, I really don't want to drop the table, nor do I want to
trigger cascading deletes or updates. Can I use the same snippet of
code generated by pg_dump to disable the triggers? Are there any
other precautions I should take?
Please CC me on any responses, as I read this list via NNTP, and
news.postgresql.org seems to be on the blink this week.