Thread: Postgres 8.3.x upgrade

Larry Rosenman wrote:
> From: pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org
> [mailto:pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Jessica Richard
> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 8:51 AM
> To: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
> Subject: [ADMIN] Postgres 8.3.x upgrade
>

FYI, we should point people here to explain upgrades:

    http://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning

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>
>
> We are going to upgrade our Postgres servers (most 8.2.9 and some 8.2.4) to
> the 8.3.x version.
>
> >From the postgres web site, I can see the 8.3.5 is the latest version.
>
> Question for people who have been on 8.3.5:
>
> Is 8.3.5 very safe to use (no major new bugs)? Is it really better than the
> older versions of  the 8.3.X families?
>
> Thanks a lot,
> Jessica
>
>
>
> Yes, we've been using it for a few months, and it's fine.  You *ALWAYS* want
> to be using the latest
>
> version within the series.  The PostgreSQL project releases those to fix
> bugs.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Larry Rosenman                     http://www.lerctr.org/~ler
>
> Phone: +1 512-248-2683                E-Mail: ler@lerctr.org
>
> US Mail: 430 Valona Loop, Round Rock, TX 78681-3893
>
>
>
>
>

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 7:50 AM, Jessica Richard <rjessil@yahoo.com> wrote:
> We are going to upgrade our Postgres servers (most 8.2.9 and some 8.2.4) to
> the 8.3.x version.
>
> From the postgres web site, I can see the 8.3.5 is the latest version.
>
> Question for people who have been on 8.3.5:
>
> Is 8.3.5 very safe to use (no major new bugs)? Is it really better than the
> older versions of  the 8.3.X families?

We've been running it in production since last fall and 8.3.x is a
very stable and very fast branch.  We had about ten or so queries that
failed due to bad casting, that we fixed in about a day.  Upgrading
postgres, even counting these small issues, is one of the least
painful upgrades I've ever done.

As for 8.3.x with x being 0 through 5 right now, the newer versions
are bug and security fixes only over 8.3.0.  You want those bug fixes,
and running an older update version (i.e. 8.3.1) versus the latest
(i.e. 8.3.5) is rarely a good idea.

Unlike some database products which are known to ship later versions
that break things (**cough** MySQL **cough**) the postgresql hackers
are VERY picky about what goes into a point update.

**cough** (see http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=31001 )