Thread: Recovering Data from a crashed database

On Thu, 2010-04-29 at 15:29 -0600, Eric Langheinrich wrote:

> I'm looking for options to recover data from a crashed postgres
> database server. We recently had a solid state storage device blow up
> taking the database server with it.
>
> The database is version 8.3, the pg_clog, pg_xlog and subdirectories
> of pg_tblspc were wiped out with the crashed storage device. We do
> have the files under /data/base.
>
> pgfsck looked like the right tool for the job, but seems to be
> outdated and lacking support for 8.3
>
> I'm open to all options including outsourcing the data recovery. Any
> help is appreciated.

2ndQuadrant offers commercial data recovery services for people in your
position. We'd be happy to help and regrettably have considerable
experience. If you're interested, please contact us direct/off-list.

--
 Simon Riggs           www.2ndQuadrant.com

On 30/04/2010 5:29 AM, Eric Langheinrich wrote:
>
> I'm looking for options to recover data from a crashed postgres database
> server. We recently had a solid state storage device blow up taking the
> database server with it.
> The database is version 8.3, the pg_clog, pg_xlog and subdirectories of
> pg_tblspc were wiped out with the crashed storage device. We do have the
> files under /data/base.
> pgfsck looked like the right tool for the job, but seems to be outdated
> and lacking support for 8.3

Whatever you do, and before you do anything else, take a full copy of
everything you still have and put it on storage you then ensure is
read-only. This is important. Any recovery attempt you make may make
things worse, and change the situation from "recoverable" to "completely
hosed".

Once you have a full snapshot, you can supply that to anyone you choose
to help with recovery.

I strongly suggest making sure the original pg data directory is
read-only too. If you're going to do your own recovery attempts, copy
the data to a spare machine and try it there, simply to make sure you've
got everything isolated and there's no chance you're going to stomp on
the original copy.

--
Craig Ringer