"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
> Roger Hand wrote:
>> I had assumed we would have to backup/restore the entire db, but I got
>> to wondering if it would be possible to simply point the new Postgres
>> install to the existing db (the data itself is on a separate drive
>> array) and be back up and running without the time to do the restore.
> Yes as long as you are not switching architectures (say to x86_64) or
> filesystems you should be fine. I assume you will be running 8.0.3
> on the new system as well.
It has to be the same machine architecture, same major Postgres version
(8.0.something), and mostly the same configure options (eg, you can't
change your mind about --enable-integer-datetimes).
Good idea to take a pg_dump backup beforehand anyway, just in case.
regards, tom lane