To: Johann Spies <jspies@sun.ac.za>
cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Out of memory 
In-reply-to: <20110721141101.GA23173@sun.ac.za> 
References: <20110721141101.GA23173@sun.ac.za>
Comments: In-reply-to Johann Spies <jspies@sun.ac.za>
	message dated "Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:11:01 +0200"
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2011 10:36:56 -0400
Message-ID: <25415.1311259016@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Johann Spies <jspies@sun.ac.za> writes:
> On a computer with 2G Ram running Debian Squeeze and Postgresql 8.4.8-0squeeze2
> I made a dump using 'pg_dump kb > kb.sql'.

> I copied the file to another computer with 8G RAM running Debian
> wheezy/sid/Postgresql 8.4.8-2 and tried to load that data by running
> 'psql -f kb.sql' - a process which produced a lot of errors ending with 

> psql:kb.sql:4189263: invalid command \N
> psql:kb.sql:4189277: invalid command \N

Almost always, when you get a cascade of error messages, the thing to
look at is the *first* error, or first few errors.  Not the last ones.

In this case I'd guess that a COPY command failed and psql is now trying
to process the COPY data as SQL commands, but you'll never be able to
tell any more than that without seeing the error message that the COPY
reported.

			regards, tom lane