Backup fails with "query to obtain distribution policy of table 'xx' returned more than one policy"

Products

• VMware Tanzu Greenplum

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Backup (gpcrondump) fails and when you look at the status report generated by the backup tool, you witness the reason for the failure is due to the below error message.

20140409:09:15:07|gp_dump_agent-[INFO]:-Dumping database "p_biafhist"...
20140409:09:15:09|gp_dump_agent-[INFO]:-TASK_SET_SERIALIZABLE
20140409:09:15:25|gp_dump_agent-[INFO]:-TASK_GOTLOCKS
20140409:09:15:28|gp_dump_agent-[ERROR]:-query to obtain distribution policy of table "gp_conf_hc" returned more than one policy
20140409:09:15:28|gp_dump_agent-[ERROR]:-*** aborted because of error:
20140409:09:15:29|gp_dump_agent-[ERROR]:-*** aborted because of error:
gp_dump_agent: Opening file /tmp/exclude_dump_tables_fileTRdErY for exclude tables list
gp_dump_agent: Line #1, value: bulkload.*

Environment

Cause

The cause of the issue is due to inconsistent indexes on the catalog table "gp_distribution_policy", the index for that table shows or returns two values for the table when ideally it should be returning one.

Resolution

Reindex the table gp_distribution_policy and it should help to overcome the issue.

psql <database-name> -c "reindex table gp_distribution_policy"