pg_restore error checking - Mailing list pgsql-bugs

Greetings,

  pg_restore doesn't handle errors very well.  While attempting to
  upgraded a database from 8.0 to 8.1 there were some errors creating
  some tables because 8.0 had PostGIS installed (along with some tables)
  and 8.1 did not.  This also meant that attempts to load the tables
  which had failed to be created didn't work.  The bad part about this
  is that instead of skipping to the end of the data from the COPY
  command, pg_restore seems to have thought that the contents of the
  table was an SQL command and read in the whole table and I think then
  got very confused.  Here's the process list from this:

postgres  6692  2.7  0.7  78380 48524 pts/3    S+   Jan19  32:26 /usr/lib/p=
ostgresql/8.1/bin/pg_dump -h /var/run/postgresql -p 5432 -Fc tsf
postgres  6693  1.2 51.7 3198716 3169240 pts/3 S+   Jan19  15:06 /usr/lib/p=
ostgresql/8.1/bin/pg_restore -h /var/run/postgresql -p 5433 -d template1 -C
postgres  6694 10.8  0.9  96780 59316 ?        S    Jan19 126:40 postgres: =
postgres tsf [local] COPY=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=
=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=
=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20
postgres  6782  3.4  0.3  52364 24092 ?        S    Jan19  40:12 postgres: =
postgres tsf [local] idle=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=
=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=
=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20=20

  As you can see, pg_restore is using up 3G or so, which seems likely to
  be the size of one of the PostGIS-based tables.  The 8.0 COPY seems to
  think it's still going (perhaps it's blocking because pg_restore is
  trying to do something, but it's not actually using any CPU time),
  while the 8.1 connection is idle (waiting for pg_restore to give it
  something to do).

  It seems like pg_restore really should be able to handle COPY errors
  correctly by skipping to the end of the COPY data segment when the
  initial COPY command comes back as an error.  If it's not too invasive
  of a fix, I really think it should be included in the next point
  release of 8.1.

      Thanks!

        Stephen