Bug? was: Re: [GENERAL] ERROR: could not convert UTF8 character to ISO8859-1

[JP Glutting]

This is reproducible, and I think it is a bug, because I have the problem not only with data backed up from Postgres 8.0 and restored to Postgres 8.1, but with data generated in Postgres 8.1. It is reproducible, at least on Windows XP. Here is a table that I backed up from Postgres 8.0. It can be restored into a Postgres 8.0 or 8.1 database, but it cannot then be backed up in Postgres 8.1. (Works fine in Postgres 8.0). I can send a file for the whole database (it just has this one table in it, so space should not be an issue.

Can anyone reproduce this on Linux or another platform? Is this a known bug?

JP

JP Glutting wrote:

More information. I backed up a database (one that failed to backup in 8.1) from the old 8.0 system, and re-imported it into the 8.0 system without any problem. Then I imported it into the 8.1 system without errors, and tried to do a backup again. It failed.

Any help or suggestions appreciated.

JP

JP Glutting wrote:

So there seems to be either a flaw in the 8.1 system, or perhaps a problem with the way 8.0 backs up it's data which only shows up when imported into the newer system. Right now I need the data I have in the 81 system, and I can't back it up except by shutting down Postgres and copying the whole /data directory. I think I am going to try to go back to 8.0. Is it a very bad idea to shut down Postgres and try to replace the data directory for 8.0 withe the data directory for 8.1?

To answer my own mail, I shut down the 8.1 database, and started up the 8.0 PostgreSQL install that is still on my computer, and the backups work fine. I do get the message about how 8.1 handles sorting of unicode characters more correctly, but looking at my backups, I can see that the full back up failed about the time that I switched to the newer version.

Is there a fix for this? Is this a bug? Is there a workaround?

Thanks for any help.

JP

JP Glutting wrote:

I have seen several people with this same error. I get mine when trying to backup using pg_dump, causing my backups to fail.

Thanks for any help!

JP


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I am using PostgreSQL 8.1 on Windows XP.The databases are in UTF8. I get the same error from the command line and using pgadmin3. Has anyone found a solution for this? Looking around online, I see that this supposedly codes for a lowercase a with a circumflex (which I don't have in tha table thet triggeres the error), but that this may be the first part of a three-byte sequence that codes for something else. Does anyone know of a way to pinpoint the character in the database? I am not sure how to search for a raw unicode character through psql or pgadmin... ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------

tbl_alumsxcentres_cols.backup
Description: Binary data

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