> Hi, > I'm running a server using postgres 8.3 and i was adviced to update it... > what i have to do in order to update it and don't stop the service?
8.3 is out of support so you will need to at a very minimum 8.4. This cannot be done without restarting. Please check for HowTo for upgrading postgres.
As Frank has stated 8.3 is no longer supported.If you are upgrading anyway, you might as well upgrade to a version that still is supported. For upgrading from a major version (ie 8.3 to 8.4 or higher), you need to dump the database to a (large) file, upgrade postgres, then restore the database dump. These actions obviously do require that the database processes be stopped and started. Depending on your application and your schema, you may require no changes and everything will work. But it's probably worth testing this first on another machine to validate. the PG configuration file postgresql.conf is different from one major version to the next, so read the docs and tune carefully. Have a look at the release notes for helpful details. For example: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/release-9-1.html
