Hi Tom, Thanks for your response.
None of the typeid atttypid fields were 0: attrelid | attname | atttypid | attstattarget | attlen | attnum | attndims | attcacheoff | atttypmod | attbyval | attstorage | attalign | attnotnull | atthasdef | attisdropped | attislocal | attinhcount ----------+---------------------------+----------+---------------+------ --+--------+----------+-------------+-----------+----------+------------ +----------+------------+-----------+--------------+------------+------- ------ 167581 | tableoid | 26 | 0 | 4 | -7 | 0 | -1 | -1 | t | p | i | t | f | f | t | 0 167581 | cmax | 29 | 0 | 4 | -6 | 0 | -1 | -1 | t | p | i | t | f | f | t | 0 167581 | xmax | 28 | 0 | 4 | -5 | 0 | -1 | -1 | t | p | i | t | f | f | t | 0 167581 | cmin | 29 | 0 | 4 | -4 | 0 | -1 | -1 | t | p | i | t | f | f | t | 0 167581 | xmin | 28 | 0 | 4 | -3 | 0 | -1 | -1 | t | p | i | t | f | f | t | 0 167581 | ctid | 27 | 0 | 6 | -1 | 0 | -1 | -1 | f | p | s | t | f | f | t | 0 167581 | ropid | 23 | -1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | -1 | -1 | t | p | i | t | f | f | f | 1 167581 | moid | 23 | -1 | 4 | 2 | 0 | -1 | -1 | t | p | i | t | f | f | f | 1 167581 | tblock | 21 | -1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | -1 | -1 | t | p | s | t | f | f | f | 1 167581 | pmtransmittedcarrierpower | 1016 | -1 | -1 | 4 | 0 | -1 | -1 | f | x | d | f | f | f | f | 1 167581 | pmaveragerssi | 1016 | -1 | -1 | 5 | 0 | -1 | -1 | f | x | d | f | f | f | f | 1 167581 | pm_count | 20 | -1 | 8 | 6 | 0 | -1 | -1 | f | p | d | f | f | f | f | 1 (12 rows) I don't know enough about this catalog table to say if anything else is unusual about it. Comparing it with other tables that do not have a problem did not reveal anything startling (to my eyes anyway). The table is part of an inheritance structure. We are using inheritance to partition the data based on a number of criteria. The top level table ('carrier') has no records of it's own but defines the structure of information stored in the table set. It's descendants (eg. 'carrier_on') are for either the original raw data, or data summarised in one way or another. The third level tables (eg 'carrier_on_13642') are divided into blocks of time. All of the tables in this structure (and also parallel table structures that we have) are linked back to two central tables via foreign keys on the fields ropid and moid. There are a lot of relations which have these fields as foreign references: this is causing another (unrelated I think) problem: when we try to delete records from the table containing the field ropid, it bombs with 'out of memory'. => \d pm.carrier_on_13642; Table "pm.carrier_on_13642" Column | Type | Modifiers ---------------------------+----------+----------- ropid | integer | not null moid | integer | not null tblock | smallint | not null pmtransmittedcarrierpower | bigint[] | pmaveragerssi | bigint[] | pm_count | bigint | Indexes: "carrier_on_13642_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (ropid, moid) "carrier_on_13642_moid_idx" btree (moid) "carrier_on_13642_ropid_idx" btree (ropid) Check constraints: "carrier_on_13642_tblock_check" CHECK (tblock = 13642::smallint) Foreign-key constraints: "carrier_on_13642_moid_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (moid) REFERENCES pm.mo(moid) ON DELETE CASCADE "carrier_on_13642_ropid_fkey" FOREIGN KEY (ropid) REFERENCES pm.rop(ropid) ON DELETE CASCADE Inherits: carrier_on Last night I did a pg_dump excluding this particular table. It failed, complaining about another table pm.carrier_oo_13642 with the same error. I then excluded that table also, after which the dump succeeded. What does "ERROR: cache lookup failed for type 0" mean? I searched all over the place for a good descripion but could not find one. Regards // Mike -----Original Message----- From: Tom Lane [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, 25 May 2007 11:52 PM To: Michael Harris (BR/EPA) Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org Subject: Re: [GENERAL] ERROR: cache lookup failed for type 0 "Michael Harris \(BR/EPA\)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Whenever any kind of query is done on the table below, this is the > result: > ispdb_vxe=> select * from pm.carrier_on_13642; > ERROR: cache lookup failed for type 0 Hmm, seems like something happened to your system catalogs, but where exactly? Try this: select * from pg_attribute where attrelid = 'pm.carrier_on_13642'::regclass; and look whether any of the atttypid fields are zero. If so, does anything else look wrong? If not, the problem must be further afield --- have you got any triggers, check constraints, etc on this table? (Can you do "\d" on it?) regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org/