pg_standby error - can't find 00000001.history - Mailing list pgsql-general

Hi,

I'm setting up a replacement standby server.  I've had this working
before until the old standby server lost a drive array and a
motherboard. So, my process was working. On the other hand, the old
slave was debian etch, with a backported 8.2 release, and the new one
is ubuntu 8.04.

I've been able to bring the database up from pitr replication using a
simple cp restore command. So I'm not concerned that I can't get the
DB up, or that the format of the data is wrong.

What's not working is doing this in a warm standby manner with
pg_standby.

postgres@grape:/home/erics$ pg_ctlcluster 8.2 main start
The PostgreSQL server failed to start. Please check the log output:
2009-03-12 13:40:18 PDT LOG:  could not load root certificate file
"root.crt": no SSL error reported
2009-03-12 13:40:18 PDT DETAIL:  Will not verify client certificates.
2009-03-12 13:40:18 PDT LOG:  database system was interrupted at
2009-03-11 16:31:37 PDT
2009-03-12 13:40:18 PDT LOG:  starting archive recovery
2009-03-12 13:40:18 PDT LOG:  restore_command = "/usr/lib/postgresql/
8.2/bin/pg_standby -l -d -k 100 -r 2 -s 2 -w 0 -t /tmp/pgsql.trigger.
5432 /data/pg/repl-db3 %f %p 2>> standby.log"
2009-03-12 13:40:18 PDT FATAL:  could not restore file
"00000001.history" from archive: return code 32512
2009-03-12 13:40:18 PDT LOG:  startup process (PID 6223) exited with
exit code 1
2009-03-12 13:40:18 PDT LOG:  aborting startup due to startup process
failure
postgres@grape:/home/erics$ tail /data/pg/main/standby.log
sh: /usr/lib/postgresql/8.2/bin/pg_standby: not found
sh: /usr/lib/postgresql/8.2/bin/pg_standby: not found
sh: /usr/lib/postgresql/8.2/bin/pg_standby: not found
sh: /usr/lib/postgresql/8.2/bin/pg_standby: not found
postgres@grape:/home/erics$ ls -l /usr/lib/postgresql/8.2/bin/pg_standby
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 20028 2009-03-12 11:44 /usr/lib/postgresql/8.2/
bin/pg_standby
postgres@grape:/home/erics$ ls -l /data/pg/repl-db3
  ls -l /data/pg/repl-db3
total 2723068
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 16777216 2009-03-09 21:22
000000010000004E000000EC
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 16777216 2009-03-09 22:22
000000010000004E000000ED
-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 16777216 2009-03-09 23:22
000000010000004E000000EE
...

1) What is 00000001.history? It doesn't look like a WAL file.
2) What file is not found?  It sorta looks like the pg_standby
binary, but I'm not sure that I believe that.
3) I know that it's going to ask for files that aren't found. Why is
it failing this time?
4) The process I'm following did work on a pair of debian-etch
machines. We managed to fail over and reset the spare at least 25 times.
I'm concerned that I don't understand why it's failing.

Any ideas?

thanks.

eric