Postgres Database Error Invalid Page Header

I'm using the Django ORM to access a PostgreSQL database, and on rare occassions Django will throw a DatabaseError like django.db.utils.DatabaseError: invalid page header in block 299560 of relation base/83开发者_如何学Go966/84778.

I've researched this, and it seems due to the database getting corrupted somehow. This is immensely frustrating, because I've always shutdown the database cleanly when rebooting, and every check I can run on my disk drive says there's nothing wrong with the disk itself. Therefore, I can only conclude that PostgreSQL is not actually ACID compliant and is corrupting my data in rare instances.

The only fix I've been able to find, is to drop and recreate my database. Obviously, this isn't really a fix, since I'm losing all my data. Is there any other way to resolve this, or should I switch to a more reliable database like MySQL?

I'm running Postgresql-8.4.8 on Ubuntu 10.04.

Most of the time you see this you either have bad memory or a bad drive. The difference between PostgreSQL and MySQL is that PostgreSQL sees it and complains as it should, while MySQL often just keeps on going with no stopping. I think the db that stops when the machine corrupts the data store is the more reliable db, because it lets you know right up front there are issues with your system.

BTW, PostgreSQL can survive an emergency shutdown (pull the plug out the back of the machine) just fine as long as the hard drives aren't lying about fsync.

Try memtest86 to see if your memory's ok, and do something like

sudo dd if=/dev/sdc1 of=/dev/null

to see if you get any errors. Anything in your dmesg or message logs about drive read write errors?