Re: converting older databases - Mailing list pgsql-general

Sathish Duraiswamy wrote:

hai

Recently we migrated our database from 8.2.4 to 8.2.12 , went through manuals and followed the below steps

1.pg_dumpall to take data dump  of current database
2.stopped database
3.moved the pgsql to backup folder
4.downloaded 8.2.12 , configured - gmake - gmake install
5.recreated cluster directory
6.restored the database with datadump

It was like complete re-installation process.

Can anyone explain a alternative method to upgrade a existing database

details vary with platform and how postgresql was installed in the first place.  with a 8.2.x install from the pgdg82 yum repositories on a rhel/centos/fedora platform

  $ yum upgrade postgresql-server

would have sufficed.   its only necessary to dump/restore when going between major versions (8.2.x to 8.3.x, for instance), or when making architecture changes (x86_32 to x86_64, or float timestamp to integer timestamp).