Indeed, the problem has been tracked down to hardware. Bad RAM. I was (with the kind help of some list members) able to rebuild the database without any data loss.
Basically, what I had to do was update 'pg_class->relnatts' from 19 to 18. This single change allowed me to actually work with the fraction table, but without the ability to access the missing 'editdate' attribute. Then, I tried to add a new column to 'fraction' using "ALTER TABLE fraction ADD editdate ...", this barfed saying that the "editdate" colun already exists. So, I then ran a "ALTER TABLE fraction RENAME editdate TO editdate2". This command suceeeded, but I still couldn't see the missing attribute in \d fraction. So, I re-updated pg_class and set relnatts back to 19. Now I could see and access the 'editdate2' attribute! A simple rename command put everything back together again. Now I can sleep. -- -**-*-*---*-*---*-*---*-----*-*-----*---*-*---*-----*-----*-*-----*--- Jon Lapham Extracta Moléculas Naturais, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.extracta.com.br/ ***-*--*----*-------*------------*--------------------*--------------- ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
