Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 22:16:03 +0000
From: John Rouillard <rouilj@renesys.com>
To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: "error with invalid page header" while vacuuming pgbench data
Message-ID: <20110523221603.GA31823@renesys.com>
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Hi all:

Not sure if this is a performance question or a generic admin
question. I have the following script running on a host different from
the database to use pgbench to test the database:

  pgbench -i (inital mode)
  pgsql vacuum analyze; (and some other code to dump table sizes)
  pgbench (multiple connections, jobs etc ....)

with a loop for setting different scales ....

 I seem to be able to provoke this error:

   vacuum...ERROR:  invalid page header in
            block 2128910 of relation base/16385/21476

on a pgbench database created with a scale factor of 1000 relatively
reliably (2 for 2). I am not seeing any disk errors from the raid
controller or the operating system.

Running pg_dumpall to check for errors reports:

   pg_dump: Error message from server: ERROR:  invalid page header in 
            block 401585 of relation base/16385/21476

which is different from the originaly reported block.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Configuration details.

OS: centos 5.5
Filesystem: data - ext4 (note 4 not 3); 6.6T formatted
            wal  - ext4; 1.5T formatted
Raid: data - level 10, 8 disk wd2003; controller LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i
      wal  - level 1,  2 disk wd2003; controller LSI MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i

Could it be an ext4 issue? It seems that ext4 may still be at the
bleeding edge for postgres use.

Thanks for any thoughts even if it's go to the admin list.

-- 
				-- rouilj

John Rouillard       System Administrator
Renesys Corporation  603-244-9084 (cell)  603-643-9300 x 111