Forum OpenACS Q&A: Database Disappeared

Posted by Adam Roberts on 10/15/04 10:46 PM

Some time ago (May 2004), we were making changes to a Postgresql server to allow a host to connect (pg_hba.conf). When we restarted the server, and restarted the aolserver process, there was only one table left. All the ACS tables were gone.

As we were troubleshooting the problem, we found the last known good dump (I pg_dump every four hours) was a month previous (sometime in April), when we made a change to ttracker_tickets's table.

From that time in April up unitl we last had this problem, openacs worked fine, but the dumps were missing all ACS related tables.

We have encountered this exact same problem again today. Originally, we thought it was due to a fault in our procedures in making the changes, however, this time, no one was altering anything. This appears to have happened sans any human intervention.

The following is a link to the last post we had with this same problem:
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=185837

We are hoping that someone might have some ideas or any experience with this. Thanks!!

2: Re: Database Disappeared (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 10/16/04 01:50 AM

This sounds like a potentially very serious PostgreSQL bug. As mentioned in the earlier thread, there's no reason to suspect that either OpenACS or AOLserver is responsible. If either had DROP'd the tables, your site would've died on the spot (actually typically any attempt to DROP a table would fail due to references from other tables view foreign keys).

And of course there's not any code in OpenACS that says "DROP all OpenACS tables".

What version are you running? Do you have PG server logs stored somewhere that cover the period of time in which the failure happened?

This discussion really belongs on one of the PG group's mailing lists.

3: Re: Database Disappeared (response to 1)

Posted by Adam Roberts on 10/18/04 10:40 PM

Thanks for the help. I have started a thread on the Postgres site.

After reviewing some of our logs and dump files, we are agreeing that
this looks to be more of a pgsql problem, and not and AOLserver problem.

Thanks!
Adam Roberts