Fairly new (less than a week) install. "PostgreSQL 8.2.4 on i386-pc-solaris2.10, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 3.4.3 (csl-sol210-3_4-branch+sol_rpath)" database size around 43 gigabytes. 2 attempts at a pg_dump across the network caused the database to go down... The first time I thought it was because of mismatched pg_dump (was version 8.0.X)...but the second time it was definitely 8.2.4 version of pg_dump. My first thought was corruption...but this database has successfully seeded 2 slony subscriber nodes from scratch as well running flawlessly under heavy load for the past week. Even more odd is that a LOCAL pg_dump (from on the box) succeeded just fine tonight (after the second crash). Thoughts? ----First Crash------- backup-srv2 prod_backup # time /usr/bin/pg_dump --format=c --compress=9 --ignore-version --username=backup --host=prod_server prod > x pg_dump: server version: 8.2.4; pg_dump version: 8.0.13 pg_dump: proceeding despite version mismatch pg_dump: WARNING: terminating connection because of crash of another server process DETAIL: The postmaster has commanded this server process to roll back the current transaction and exit, because another server process exited abnormally and possibly corrupted shared memory. HINT: In a moment you should be able to reconnect to the database and repeat your command. pg_dump: server closed the connection unexpectedly This probably means the server terminated abnormally before or while processing the request. pg_dump: SQL command to dump the contents of table "access_logs" failed: PQendcopy() failed. pg_dump: Error message from server: server closed the connection unexpectedly This probably means the server terminated abnormally before or while processing the request. pg_dump: The command was: COPY public.access_logs (ip, username, "action", date, params) TO stdout; ------Second Crash-------- backup-srv2 ~ # time /usr/bin/pg_dump --format=c --compress=9 --username=backup --host=prod_server prod | wc -l pg_dump: Dumping the contents of table "audit" failed: PQgetCopyData() failed. pg_dump: Error message from server: server closed the connection unexpectedly This probably means the server terminated abnormally before or while processing the request. pg_dump: The command was: COPY public.audit (audit_id, entity_id, table_name, serial_id, audit_action, when_ts, user_id, user_ip) TO stdout; ____________________________________________________________________________________ Moody friends. Drama queens. Your life? Nope! - their life, your story. Play Sims Stories at Yahoo! Games. http://sims.yahoo.com/ ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend