pg_restore failes - invalid byte sequence for encoding "UNICODE": 0xa3

From: ofuerst(at)tsak(dot)net
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: pg_restore failes - invalid byte sequence for encoding "UNICODE": 0xa3
Date: 2006-07-17 13:37:34
Message-ID: 1153143454.44bb929ebb77d@domainfactory-webmail.de
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Hi all,

I encountered a somewhat big problem in Postgres which is effectively keeping me
from restoring any previous and future database dumps.

We are running FC4 with the latest updates. "SELECT version();" shows
"PostgreSQL 8.0.8 on i386-redhat-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC
i386-redhat-linux-gcc (GCC) 4.0.2 20051125 (Red Hat 4.0.2-8)".

Up until now it was easy to just take a previous dump of the live server's
database, restore it on the test server, restore it on my development machine
or any other operation. I never had any problems.

But today, when trying to restore yesterdays backup for some test data, I get
something like this (if I truncate the mentioned table before backing up, it
happens in other tables as well):

pg_restore: ERROR: invalid byte sequence for encoding "UNICODE": 0xa3
CONTEXT: COPY aw_statements, line 19: "2234 2006-01-11 16:15:30 2006-01-11
16:15:30.810975 2001 2006/0002234 171 \N 0 <?xml version="1.0" e..."
pg_restore: [archiver (db)] error returned by PQendcopy: ERROR: invalid byte
sequence for encoding "UNICODE": 0xa3
CONTEXT: COPY aw_statements, line 19: "2234 2006-01-11 16:15:30 2006-01-11
16:15:30.810975 2001 2006/0002234 171 \N 0 <?xml version="1.0" e..."

As you can see, the data it complains about was inserted in January. I backed up
and restored since then at least a hundred times without a problem. Is it
possible, that the recent update to Postgres 8.0.8 on FC4 breaks this? Despite
the statement in the manuals, that minor revisions do not need a pg_dumpall?

Even though that doesn't effect our current live server, I'm worried about
eventual data loss on the live server without a possibility to restore from
last night's backup.

Restoring to my development machine running Windows and Postgres 8.0.3 doesn't
seem to be affected. And let me assure you that source and target database are
always created with an encoding of UNICODE.

Any help is much appreciated.

Best,
Oliver Fuerst

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