I have an older server I am trying to restore a dump onto.
A _filesystem_ dump of the PG data files of or a _PostgreSQL_ dump using pg_dump/pg_dumpall? This sounds like a problem stemming from a filesystem dump.
If it is a file-system dump, you will need to restore the files into the server's data directories. The PG server version must match the major version the file-system came from. Additionally, you will probably need to attempt the restore onto a machine of the same architecture. Even then, you may have problems - especially if the dump was made while PG was running.
If you have a running version of the database somewhere you will be better off using the pg_dump/pg_dumpall tools to do the dump (and if migrating to a newer version of PG, use the pg_dump/pg_dumpall from the newer PG version) then restore from that dump.
If you don't have the data in a currently functioning PG server and you do succeed in recovering the data, do a PostgreSQL dump ASAP.
Cheers, Steve
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the response. I should have been clearer initially.
I have a PG dump (using pg_dumpall) from a PostgreSQL 7.3.4 server on Redhat 7.2 that I am trying to restore.
But on the newer machine (I cannot verify if postgres has ever been run on it or if it did when last), even before I try to restore, I notice that on startup I get the following error.
[root@devdb3 8.1]# service postgresql start
An old version of the database format was found. You need to upgrade the data format before using PostgreSQL. See /usr/share/doc/postgresql-8.1.10/README.rpm-dist for more information.