Thread: BUG #4679: invalid UTF-8 byte sequence detected near byte 0xa3 + postgresql

The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference:      4679
Logged by:          Bhajesh
Email address:      bbhajesh@zeomega.com
PostgreSQL version: 8.1
Operating system:   red hat linux 9
Description:        invalid UTF-8 byte sequence detected near byte 0xa3  +
postgresql
Details:

Hi

   My previous server database encoding was SQL_ASCII.i took the backup in
UTF8 encoding.when i was going to restore the backup in new server whose
encoding is UTF-8 it is throwing some error like "invalid UTF-8 byte
sequence detected near byte 0xa3".When i tried to restore same server then
also it is showing same error.I don't know why it is happening please help
me.

Bhajesh wrote:
>    My previous server database encoding was SQL_ASCII.i took the backup in
> UTF8 encoding.when i was going to restore the backup in new server whose
> encoding is UTF-8 it is throwing some error like "invalid UTF-8 byte
> sequence detected near byte 0xa3".When i tried to restore same server then
> also it is showing same error.I don't know why it is happening please help
> me.

What commands exactly did you use to take the backup and to restore it?

It seems that even though you specified SQL_ASCII as the encoding in the
old database, you nevertheless stored non-ASCII characters in it. You
need to know what encoding was used to store them. Once you know that,
you can edit the backup dump (assuming you used pg_dump), and modify the
line that says "SET client_encoding = ..." to the correct encoding. You
can also use the iconv program to convert the dump from one encoding to
another.

--
   Heikki Linnakangas
   EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com