Marc,
In case you don't work out a better way to sort this, I can reproduce
and fix the error 'catalog is missing n attribute(s) for relid 16396'
caused by directly deleting (part of) pg_attribute:
Setup :
$ initdb
$ pg_ctl start
$ createdb test
Backup :
$ pg_ctl stop
$ tar -czvf pgdata.tar.gz pgdata
Break :
$ pg_ctl start
$ psql -d test -c "delete from pg_attribute where attrelid=16396"
$ psql test [gets FATAL catalog is missing 20 attribute(s) for relid 16396]
Fix (restore pg_attribute to database test):
$ pg_ctl stop
$ tar -zxvf pgdata.tar.gz pgdata/base/17142/1249
$ pg_ctl start
$ psql test [now works]
The caveat is that any relations created or modified between the backup
and breakage will not be properly restored.
regards
Mark
