On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 16:21 +0200, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> initdb on one platform, copy the data directory over to the other
> system, and try to start postmaster. It will complain if the on-disk
> format is not compatible.
>
> You can also run pg_controlinfo on both systems, and compare the
> results. If the "Maximum data alignment", and all the values below it in
> the pg_controlinfo output match, the formats are compatible.
I don't think these things will work for all differences that could be
problematic. For instance, a GNU system has a different collation for
the en_US locale than an OS X system. This means that the indexes built
using en_US on one system can't be moved to the other.
How would either of these tests be able to determine that the systems
are incompatible?
I don't think this is a problem between GNU and FreeBSD, however, so
this may work in Philip's case.
Regards,Jeff Davis