Cant view table description

[gtommo]

Why if I say \d tablename; on tables in my database, does it work for certain tables but on others it gives the following error :

ERROR: Function pg_catalog.pg_get_indexdef(oid, integer, boolean) does not exist
Unable to identify a function that satisfies the given argument types
You may need to add explicit typecasts

Thanks

[michaelb]

Can you copy and paste here the entire snippet including \d as it entered and the output it generates?

[gtommo]

If I enter :
\d waybill (or \d waybill;)
The output is :
ERROR: Function pg_catalog.pg_get_indexdef(oid, integer, boolean) does not exist. Unable to identify a function that satisfies the given argument types
You may need to add explicit typecasts

[michaelb]

Looks like you have a problem; can you run these four commands and post the results they generate?

(the first command uses a lower-case L)

\l  
select current_database();
\df+  pg_get_indexdef
select version();
 

[gtommo]

Ok, here it is :

\l
        List of databases
   Name    |  Owner   | Encoding
-----------+----------+-----------
 db4002    | postgres | SQL_ASCII
 garydb    | postgres | SQL_ASCII
 template0 | postgres | SQL_ASCII
 template1 | postgres | SQL_ASCII
(4 rows)
 
select current_database();
 current_database
------------------
 db4002
(1 row)
 
\df+  pg_get_indexdef
                                                         List of functions
   Schema   |      Name       | Result data type | Argument data types |  Owner   | Language |   Source code   |    Description
------------+-----------------+------------------+---------------------+----------+----------+-----------------+-------------------
 pg_catalog | pg_get_indexdef | text             | oid                 | postgres | internal | pg_get_indexdef | index description
(1 row)
 
select version();
                                                        version
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 7.3.4 on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 4.0.1 (4.0.1-5mdk for Mandriva Linux release 2006.0)
(1 row)
 

[michaelb]

I checked on the two versions of PostgreSQL I had access to:

testdb=# select version();
                              version                              
-------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 7.3.10 on sparc-sun-solaris2.8, compiled by GCC 2.95.2
(1 row)
 
testdb=# \df+ pg_get_indexdef
                                                         List of functions
 Result data type |   Schema   |      Name       | Argument data types |  Owner   | Language |   Source code   |    Description    
------------------+------------+-----------------+---------------------+----------+----------+-----------------+-------------------
 text             | pg_catalog | pg_get_indexdef | oid                 | tomkins  | internal | pg_get_indexdef | index description
(1 row)
 

postgres=#  select version();
                                         version
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 8.2.3 on i686-pc-mingw32, compiled by GCC gcc.exe (GCC) 3.4.2 (mingw-special)
(1 row)
 
postgres=#  \df pg_get_indexdef
                            List of functions
   Schema   |      Name       | Result data type |  Argument data types
------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------------
 pg_catalog | pg_get_indexdef | text             | oid
 pg_catalog | pg_get_indexdef | text             | oid, integer, boolean
(2 rows)
 

So, the version 7.3.10, which is comparable to yours has only one function pg_get_indexdef, while version 8.2.3 has also the overloaded version, which takes three arguments.
This is exactly the implementation that were missing in your db, according to the error message you got:
ERROR: Function pg_catalog.pg_get_indexdef(oid, integer, boolean) does not exist.
The question is why there's a call to the function that should not be there?
I would take a good look at how this server was build, installed or configured. Could it be there's some version mismatch between software components?
But first check on your PATH variable and try to run command
which psql
and
psql --version
to make sure that executable you are calling is from the correct installation. I'd think there's got to be a compatibility check, but you never know. It is not unheard of to have more than one version of the database server on the machine, so your env. variables may play a critical role here.

[gtommo]

Thanks very much for that info.
If I do a 'select version()', it says PostgreSQL 7.3.4
If I do a 'psql --version', it says PostgreSQL 8.0.3
so thats a bit intersting.
I'll see what I can do, thanks.