PostgreSQL 7.4beta4 Documentation
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# REINDEX

## Name

REINDEX -- rebuild indexes

## Synopsis

    REINDEX { DATABASE | TABLE | INDEX } name [ FORCE ]

## Description

`REINDEX` rebuilds an index based on the data stored in the table, replacing the old copy of the index. There are two main reasons to use `REINDEX`:

- An index has become corrupted, and no longer contains valid data. Although in theory this should never happen, in practice indexes may become corrupted due to software bugs or hardware failures. `REINDEX` provides a recovery method.

- The index in question contains a lot of dead index pages that are not being reclaimed. This can occur with B-tree indexes in PostgreSQL under certain access patterns. `REINDEX` provides a way to reduce the space consumption of the index by writing a new version of the index without the dead pages. See Section 21.2 for more information.

## Parameters

DATABASE

  Recreate all system indexes of a specified database. Indexes on user tables are not processed. Also, indexes on shared system catalogs are skipped except in stand-alone mode (see below).

TABLE

  Recreate all indexes of a specified table. If the table has a secondary "TOAST" table, that is reindexed as well.

INDEX

  Recreate a specified index.

name

  The name of the specific database, table, or index to be reindexed. Table and index names may be schema-qualified.

FORCE

  This is an obsolete option; it is ignored if specified.

## Notes

If you suspect corruption of an index on a user table, you can simply rebuild that index, or all indexes on the table, using `REINDEX INDEX` or `REINDEX TABLE`. Another approach to dealing with a corrupted user-table index is just to drop and recreate it. This may in fact be preferable if you would like to maintain some semblance of normal operation on the table meanwhile. `REINDEX` acquires exclusive lock on the table, while `CREATE INDEX` only locks out writes not reads of the table.

Things are more difficult if you need to recover from corruption of an index on a system table. In this case it's important for the system to not have used any of the suspect indexes itself. (Indeed, in this sort of scenario you may find that server processes are crashing immediately at start-up, due to reliance on the corrupted indexes.) To recover safely, the server must be started with the -P option, which prevents it from using indexes for system catalog lookups.

One way to do this is to shut down the postmaster and start a stand-alone PostgreSQL server with the -P option included on its command line. Then, `REINDEX DATABASE`, `REINDEX TABLE`, or `REINDEX INDEX` can be issued, depending on how much you want to reconstruct. If in doubt, use `REINDEX DATABASE` to select reconstruction of all system indexes in the database. Then quit the standalone server session and restart the regular server. See the postgres reference page for more information about how to interact with the stand-alone server interface.

Alternatively, a regular server session can be started with -P included in its command line options. The method for doing this varies across clients, but in all libpq-based clients, it is possible to set the `PGOPTIONS` environment variable to -P before starting the client. Note that while this method does not require locking out other clients, it may still be wise to prevent other users from connecting to the damaged database until repairs have been completed.

If corruption is suspected in the indexes of any of the shared system catalogs (`pg_database`, `pg_group`, or `pg_shadow`), then a standalone server must be used to repair it. `REINDEX` will not process shared catalogs in multiuser mode.

For all indexes except the shared system catalogs, `REINDEX` is crash-safe and transaction-safe. `REINDEX` is not crash-safe for shared indexes, which is why this case is disallowed during normal operation. If a failure occurs while reindexing one of these catalogs in standalone mode, it will not be possible to restart the regular server until the problem is rectified. (The typical symptom of a partially rebuilt shared index is "index is not a btree" errors.)

Prior to PostgreSQL 7.4, `REINDEX TABLE` did not automatically process TOAST tables, and so those had to be reindexed by separate commands. This is still possible, but redundant.

## Examples

Recreate the indexes on the table my_table:

    REINDEX TABLE my_table;

Rebuild a single index:

    REINDEX INDEX my_index;

Rebuild all system indexes in a particular database, without trusting them to be valid already:

    $ export PGOPTIONS="-P"
    $ psql broken_db
    ...
    broken_db=> REINDEX DATABASE broken_db;
    broken_db=> \q

## Compatibility

There is no `REINDEX` command in the SQL standard.

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