On 10/31/07, Chris Hoover <revoohc@gmail.com> wrote:
> Question,
>
> I have an ancient database that is running Postgresql 7.2.1 on AIX. Is it
> safe to directly upgrade the database to 8.1? If not, what steps do I need
> to take?
It might be better to upgrade to 7.2.xx where xx is the latest
version, as some bugs in the older version you have might make dumping
data out of it fail.
You can't just upgrade it in place to 8.x, you have to dump and
restore it. It is standard to use the pg_dump from the later version
against the older version. So, you should install 8.2.5 on another
directory and another port on your AIX machine (or a new machine if
you're migrating hardware at the same time) and run pg_dumpall from
8.2.5 against the 7.2.x database.
Generally speaking, you can do something like this:
/usr/local/pg82/bin/pg_dumpall -h oldmachine -p 5432 | psql -h
newmachine -p5433 template1
and pg_dumpall will handle the dependencies etc for you.
> I have been pushing for 3 years to upgrade this database, and with some
> upcoming projects, I am going to do another push with management to upgrade
> this database.
Push hard. They'll thank you later.
> Also, I know there are a ton of fixes/improvements from 7.2, but are there
> any major data losing bugs in this version that I can use as added pressure
> on management?
Well, 7.2 is broken and not going to get fixed. It WILL eventually
eat your data. In fact, I'm honestly surprised it hasn't failed yet.
Besides that, 8.2.5 is about 1,000 times faster (ok, maybe not, but it
certainly feels that way).
Go right to 8.2.5. 8.2 has been out a year, it's stable, and as long
as upgrades seem to take in your shop, being one version further along
ain't gonna hurt.