My 2 cents: I'm somewhat new to PostgreSQL and sysadmin'ing in general,
but I haven't had problems with installs/upgrades.
The reason: I haven't used the RPMs, I went the "hard" route and did
builds and installs. This, in turn, forced me to read the
install/upgrade documentation (very well written, kudos to the authors
-- very good section on system config, too) which I would never have
done if I had done an RPM-style upgrade.
Given the complexity of a DB system (especially if used for heavy work)
and the clarity of the docs, I strongly recommend anyone to scan through
them at least once...
http://www.us.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/7.3/postgres/admin.html
Andrew
Hacksaw wrote:
>No worries, I do know what to do in essence. One question: is there anything
>*special* I need to do? I notice a mention of needing to hand edit the
>dumpfiles if upgrading from 7.2 to 7.3. Is this the case here as well? Where
>is the documentation on that?
>
>Let me say that despite the problems, I support your efforts. Being a
>sys-admin, I understand that mistakes are made, and I'm cool with it. I mainly
>wanted to help make sure someone with less experience and more at stake
>doesn't get burned.
>
>Is there a clear marker of file format version in the database files? My
>suggestion would be to have the pre-install script test for that, and abort if
>it's the wrong version. Then you have the README.upgrade say something like
>"After you run pg_dumpall, move /var/lib/pqsql to /var/lib/pgsql.$OLD_VERSION_N
>UMBER.
>
>That way, the preinstall will find nothing, and be able to do initdb, and if
>you are feeling really snarky, offer to try a restore for them.
>
>
>