Re: Data problem - error "invalid attribute number # for <tablename>"

Sebastien Boisvert <sebastienboisvert(at)yahoo(dot)com> writes:
> We've received a client's database which was giving errors and refusing to be backed up; at this point we do not know what's happened to the database to corrupt it (likely a hardware or power failure, etc.)
> The error that is being given when trying to do selects on the affected table or doing a pg_dump is:

> ERROR: invalid attribute number 32533 for largedata

Some poking through the source code finds only one match for that error
message, which is in relcache.c. It looks like you have a row in
pg_attribute that claims to belong to that relation, but has attnum
32533. It would be interesting to see the results for
select * from pg_attribute where attrelid = 'largedata'::regclass

What PG version is this exactly, on what platform?

regards, tom lane