Re: [GENERAL] problems transfering databases

[Jeff Eckermann]

Looks like you already have the answer.  The error message is a dead giveaway.  Some field, in this case having a null value (represented as '\N') contains a carriage return character, like: '\NCR'.  PostgreSQL cannot make sense out of this combination, so it returns an error.  The CR contained in the error message causes the output to return to the start of the line, outputting the rest of the message from the beginning: see how the final " ' " overwrites the "p" in "psql". Edit out the CR characters, and the problem will go away. This is what Tom already said; I am expanding on it. ----- Original Message ----- From: Miroslav Koncar To: Tom Lane Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 3:18 AM Subject: Re: [GENERAL] problems transfering databases Hello Tom, thanks for the answer. This is the procedure, how we tried to transfer the data from one machine to another. My collegue has used the pg_dumpall command, in the following way: pg_dumpall > backups/2001-06-04db.out Since it is a simple test database, the 2001-06-04db.out file was around 40kB, so he has sent it to me via email. I tried to load the data from the file in two different ways: psql -f 2001-08-21db.out cat 2001-06-04db.out | psql but got the error like stated before. I've tried to do this on Solaris and Linux (I've set postgreSQL up on my Linux box for testing purposes), but the same error pops up. Could it have something to do with the versions of the databases, and how it was installed? The version I use is psql (PostgreSQL) 7.1.2 (the output of psql -V command), but I'm not sure what version did my collegue use (I'll find that out, but I think it is 7.x.x). Regards,     Miroslav Tom Lane wrote: Miroslav Koncar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > 'sql:2001-08-21db.out:5: ERROR:  copy: line 1, Bad abstime external > representation '\N > psql:2001-08-21db.out:5: PQendcopy: resetting connection Given the weird line-wrapping of the message, I'm going to bet that the problem is that newlines in the dump file have gotten converted to DOS format (ie, \n became \r\n), and COPY is unhappy because it sees the \r as part of the data.  When it echoes the data it didn't like, the presence of the \r messes up the format of the error message. Not sure *how* that happened in a Linux-to-Solaris transfer, though; what tool did you use to transfer the dump file?                         regards, tom lane --  Miroslav Koncar Software Engineer Ericsson Nikola Tesla ETK/D/R Tel: +385 1 365 3479 Fax: +385 1 365 3548 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]