pg_dump new version

On 23 Feb 2010, at 10:45, Oliver Kohll - Mailing Lists wrote:

Hello,

May I take a lull between PG releases to ask an upgrade Q? Documentation and people often recommend that when doing a major version upgrade, to dump data from the old server with the new version of pg_dump, since the new pg_dump may have bugfixes not available to the old.

I've never done this simply because it's not clear from the docs how to - perhaps it's platform dependant. The upgrade doc
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/interactive/install-upgrading.html
is a very clear step by step procedure to follow with the exception of

'To make the backup, you can use the pg_dumpall command from the version you are currently running. For best results, however, try to use the pg_dumpall command fromPostgreSQL 8.4.2, since this version contains bug fixes and improvements over older versions. While this advice might seem idiosyncratic since you haven't installed the new version yet, it is advisable to follow it if you plan to install the new version in parallel with the old version'.

So for someone using RPM packages to install Postgres, what's the recommended sequence to do this?

I'm not familiar with RPM packages (or any other Linux package manager), but don't they have a separate package with the client applications? My OS of choice does.

Alban Hertroys

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Oliver Kohll - Mailing Lists <oliver.lists@gtwm.co.uk> writes:

May I take a lull between PG releases to ask an upgrade Q? Documentation and people often recommend that when doing a major version upgrade, to dump data from the old server with the new version of pg_dump, since the new pg_dump may have bugfixes not available to the old.
...
So for someone using RPM packages to install Postgres, what's the recommended sequence to do this?

There isn't any especially good way to do it with the RPM packages
(at least not the ones from Red Hat or PGDG), because you can't
concurrently install different versions. In practice the old pg_dump
should work fine for this purpose in practically all cases, so it's
not worth your trouble to try to figure out a workaround.

(I am hoping that in 9.0 we have a better upgrade path for RPM
installations.)

regards, tom lane

I'm not clear when you said that "old pg_dump should work fine for this purpose in practically all cases, so it's not worth your trouble to try to figure out a workaround". Did you mean that it's OK to use the old version of pg_dump when you are doing a major version upgrade when working with a RPM package?

Thanks
Mary

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org [mailto:pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Tom Lane
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2010 7:47 AM
To: Oliver Kohll - Mailing Lists
Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] pg_dump new version

Oliver Kohll - Mailing Lists <oliver.lists@gtwm.co.uk> writes:

May I take a lull between PG releases to ask an upgrade Q? Documentation and people often recommend that when doing a major version upgrade, to dump data from the old server with the new version of pg_dump, since the new pg_dump may have bugfixes not available to the old.
...
So for someone using RPM packages to install Postgres, what's the recommended sequence to do this?

There isn't any especially good way to do it with the RPM packages (at least not the ones from Red Hat or PGDG), because you can't concurrently install different versions. In practice the old pg_dump should work fine for this purpose in practically all cases, so it's not worth your trouble to try to figure out a workaround.

(I am hoping that in 9.0 we have a better upgrade path for RPM
installations.)

regards, tom lane

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