On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 4:07 PM, Tomas Vondra <t...@fuzzy.cz> wrote: >>> Googling around, it sounds like this is often due to table corruption, >>> which would be unfortunate, but usually seems to be repeatable. I can >>> re-run that query without issue, and in fact can select * from the entire >>> table without issue. I do see the row was updated a few minutes after this >>> error, so is it wishful thinking that vacuum came around and successfully >>> removed the old, corrupted row version? >> >> It also happens that 18446744073709551613 is -3 in 64-bit 2's complement if >> it was unsigned. Is it possible that -3 was some error return code that got >> cast and then passed directly to malloc()? > > That's not likely. The corruption is usually the cause, when it hits > varlena header - that's where the length info is stored. In that case > PostgreSQL suddenly thinks the varlena field has a negative value (and > malloc accepts unsigned integers).
If the problem truly went away, one likely possibility is that the bad tuple was simply deleted -- occasionally the corruption is limited to a tuple or two but doesn't spill over into the page itself -- in such situations some judicious deletion of rows can get you to a point where you can pull off a dump. merlin -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
