I own a server that was recently cracked by, I presume, an incompetent script kiddie. Minutes after he bravely tagged the web site, the server went down hard and would not boot. I've built a new system. I need to recover a postgresql 7.2 database from the old hard drive, which is still readable. The postgresql data directory is intact. The latest version of postgresql is incompatible with 7.2.x, so I compiled postgresql-7.2.7 and attempted to run postgres -D copy_of_old_data_dir The error response (on stdout) is DEBUG: database system was shut down at 2005-02-20 21:54:33 CST DEBUG: checkpoint record is at 0/5CCA0AC DEBUG: redo record is at 0/5CCA0AC; undo record is at 0/0; shutdown TRUE DEBUG: next transaction id: 73360; next oid: 59092 DEBUG: database system is ready FATAL 1: Database "postgres" does not exist in the system catalog. DEBUG: shutting down DEBUG: database system is shut down Am I close? or is this approach doomed? Suggestions gratefully accepted. Don Doumakes Email: doumakes at loganet dot net Do not reply to spamtrap@xxxxxxxxx ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly