PostgreSQL streaming replication broken: invalid magic number, out-of-sequence timeline ID For some reason, my PostgreSQL slave no longer streaming-replicates changes on the master. It was working before, for a while, but I recently noticed that the slave's database contents is old, and there are errors in the slave's log files, namely "invalid magic number 0000" and "out-of-sequence timeline ID 1 (after 2)".

Do you have any idea how can I troubleshoot this? Or why does it happen?

Details follow.

Log file error messages: (on the slave, pg_log/postgresql-Sat.log)

LOG:  entering standby mode
LOG:  redo starts at 0/1C78848
LOG:  consistent recovery state reached at 0/1C7FA30
LOG:  database system is ready to accept read only connections
LOG:  invalid magic number 0000 in log file 0, segment 1, offset 14942208
LOG:  streaming replication successfully connected to primary
LOG:  out-of-sequence timeline ID 1 (after 2) in log file 0, segment 1, offset 0
FATAL:  terminating walreceiver process due to administrator command
LOG:  out-of-sequence timeline ID 1 (after 2) in log file 0, segment 1, offset 0
LOG:  out-of-sequence timeline ID 1 (after 2) in log file 0, segment 1, offset 0
LOG:  out-of-sequence timeline ID 1 (after 2) in log file 0, segment 1, offset 0
...


Transaction logs: (on the slave -- weird, log file 0...2...1 is from January 2012, but 0...2...2 is from December 2011!?)

-bash-4.1$ tree -D pg_xlog/
pg_xlog/
├── [Dec  6  6:27]  000000010000000000000001
├── [Jan 20 21:33]  000000020000000000000001
├── [Dec 21  5:29]  000000020000000000000002
├── [Dec  6  6:30]  00000002.history
└── [Dec  6  6:30]  archive_status
    └── [Dec  6  6:30]  00000002.history.ready

1 directory, 5 files
-bash-4.1$ cat pg_xlog/00000002.history 
1       000000010000000000000001        no recovery target specified


Transaction logs: (on the master)

-bash-4.1$ tree -D pg_xlog/
pg_xlog/
├── [Dec  6  6:27]  000000010000000000000001
├── [Jan 21  8:55]  000000020000000000000001
├── [Dec 21  5:31]  000000020000000000000002
├── [Dec  6  6:30]  00000002.history
└── [Dec  6  6:30]  archive_status
    └── [Dec  6  6:30]  00000002.history.ready

-bash-4.1$ cat pg_xlog/00000002.history 
1       000000010000000000000001        no recovery target specified


Config files: (on the slave)

---postgresql.conf---
wal_level = hot_standby
...
hot_standby = on
...

---recovery.conf---
standby_mode = 'on'
primary_conninfo = 'host=dw0azewdbpv11danny user=replicator password=...'
recovery_target_timeline = 'latest'


Finally, on the slave, ps aux shows that:

Jan20   0:01 postgres: startup process   waiting for 000000020000000000000001

Update one week later:

There seems to be a replication bug for PostgreSQL builds with gcc 4.6.0.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2011-07/msg00686.php
and
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=commitdiff;h=45d792f70272ed57b932816562f31c2f79426c2a
However I'd guess that that bug would not affect 9.1?

PostgreSQL versions should be identical on master and slave, and SELECT version() looks like this on both master and slave:

-bash-4.1$ psql
psql (9.1.1)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# SELECT version();
                                                   version                                                    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 9.1.1 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.4.5 20110214 (Red Hat 4.4.5-6), 64-bit
(1 row)


Perhaps I should also mention that the current master was a slave, originally, and the current slave was the master, originally. -- I did one failover, to test that it worked okay.

(I'll ask this question on the Postgres mailing lists.)
This doesn't sound like the same thing.  The GCC version is different and your PostgreSQL version is different.  IIRC it was an issue with GCC 4.6 optimizations and was fixed.  I don't believe it should have impacted your setup.

More likely something changed which caused this.  Perhaps the slave was promoted to a master briefly and then demoted again?  That will create problems like this all the time.

The timeline issue suggests to me that this is in fact what happened. It doesn't matter whether you write to a db or not, just completing recovery and promoting is enough to break the timeline.