On Fri, 2006-10-06 at 11:20 -0400, Mark Greenbank wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
> Thanks for the reply -- yeah, I know it's and old version but
> management has been reluctant to update a production database.
If there exists a patchlevel (the third component of the version) higher
than the one you're using, generally it's safer to upgrade the
production system than not. Updating the patchlevel does not require a
dump/restore, just a restart. Just schedule a minute or two of downtime.
> 1) I'm assuming that if I update 7.3.2 to 7.3.15 I can leave the data
> in place (that is, without doing a dump/restore) -- is this correct?
Correct, no dump/reload necessary, just upgrade and restart postgres.
> 2) If I up upgrade to 8.x can just copy the data files or do I have to
> do a dump/restore? The latter would be hard since pg_dump also fails
> on this same table and pg_dump doesn't seem to have an 'ignore table'
> option.
Upgrading the first or second component of the version number (i.e. 7.3
to 7.4 or 7.4 to 8.0) requires a full dump/reload. However, it might be
worth considering since you're using a version that's been obsolete for
years.
Regards,
Jeff Davis