Re: Vacuumdb Errors --Any ideas?

I received the following errors from an automated full vacuum:

vacuumdb: vacuuming of database "milemgr" failed: ERROR: tuple concurrently
updated
ERROR: Vacuum command failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

I can't find any information on these errors. Does anyone have an idea what
they mean and indicate?

[PG v7.4.2, RH 2.4.21-4.ELsmp]

TIA,

Keary Suska
Esoteritech, Inc.
"Leveraging Open Source for a better Internet"

Keary Suska <hierophant(at)pcisys(dot)net> writes:
> I received the following errors from an automated full vacuum:
> vacuumdb: vacuuming of database "milemgr" failed: ERROR: tuple concurrently
> updated

Hm, could you have had more than one of these beasts running? It's
possible to get such an error from concurrent ANALYZE operations on
the same table. (This happens if the second ANALYZE tries to update the
pg_statistic rows before the first one is able to commit. It's a pretty
narrow window, and there's no real harm involved, so we haven't tried
hard to get rid of the race condition.)

> ERROR: Vacuum command failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

I have no idea where that came from --- I can't find "vacuum command
failed" anywhere in current sources. I suspect the second part of the
message just comes from someone printing strerror(errno) in a context
where errno isn't meaningful.

Bottom line: don't panic. If you can find where the second message came
from, though, I'd like to know.

regards, tom lane

on 5/1/04 3:11 PM, tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us purportedly said:

> Keary Suska <hierophant(at)pcisys(dot)net> writes:
>> I received the following errors from an automated full vacuum:
>> vacuumdb: vacuuming of database "milemgr" failed: ERROR: tuple concurrently
>> updated
>
> Hm, could you have had more than one of these beasts running? It's
> possible to get such an error from concurrent ANALYZE operations on
> the same table.

That is likely the issue--I forgot that I have a regular vacuum analyze that
may run at the same time.

>> ERROR: Vacuum command failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
>
> I have no idea where that came from --- I can't find "vacuum command
> failed" anywhere in current sources. I suspect the second part of the
> message just comes from someone printing strerror(errno) in a context
> where errno isn't meaningful.

Probably is--in this case vacuumdb is called form a Perl script that
reports errors itself as well if the command failed. That error part,
"Inappropriate ioctl for device", is probably just Perl not knowing how to
intrerpret vacuumdb return codes. Sorry for having you look this up. I
should have reviewed my script to see what it carps on its own.

Thanks for your help,

Keary Suska
Esoteritech, Inc.
"Leveraging Open Source for a better Internet"