Thread: Is using cross-version pg_autovacuum possible/safe?

Is it possible/safe to compile the latest version of pg_autovacuum, and use
it with a 7.2.4 postmaster?

I know the better solution would be to upgrade everything, but that involves
a lot of work which we've managed to put off for a long time already, and
autovacuum is pretty much the only feature we really need immediately.

--
    Peter Haworth    pmh@edison.ioppublishing.com
"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make
 it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
 make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."
        -- C A R Hoare

On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 06:02, Peter Haworth wrote:
> Is it possible/safe to compile the latest version of pg_autovacuum, and use
> it with a 7.2.4 postmaster?
>
> I know the better solution would be to upgrade everything, but that involves
> a lot of work which we've managed to put off for a long time already, and
> autovacuum is pretty much the only feature we really need immediately.

As far as I know, yes.  I have tested pg_autovacuum against 7.3.x and
that work fine.

Since pg_autovacuum is just a standard client app that looks at stats
collector info to make decisions about when to vacuum, it should work.
I think there may be been some stats collector bugs that have been fixed
since 7.2.x, but for the most part it should work just fine.

Please post your results as it might be useful to know if it works.

Matthew

After a long battle with technology, matthew@zeut.net ("Matthew T. O'Connor"), an earthling, wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-05-19 at 06:02, Peter Haworth wrote:
>> Is it possible/safe to compile the latest version of pg_autovacuum, and use
>> it with a 7.2.4 postmaster?
>>
>> I know the better solution would be to upgrade everything, but that involves
>> a lot of work which we've managed to put off for a long time already, and
>> autovacuum is pretty much the only feature we really need immediately.
>
> As far as I know, yes.  I have tested pg_autovacuum against 7.3.x and
> that work fine.
>
> Since pg_autovacuum is just a standard client app that looks at stats
> collector info to make decisions about when to vacuum, it should work.
> I think there may be been some stats collector bugs that have been fixed
> since 7.2.x, but for the most part it should work just fine.
>
> Please post your results as it might be useful to know if it works.

Actually, no, it doesn't.

pg_autovacuum will "crap out" if pointed at a 7.2.x instance.  It
seems most likely that the cause is some changes to the pg_ tables
between the versions; I haven't found the Round Tuits to dig deeply
into it.  I no longer have any 7.2 instances I am concerned about for
autovacuum, so I in a sense "don't care" anymore...

If I had the "round tuits," what I'd rather do is to create a daemon,
probably in Perl/Python, that is up to the task of managing a whole
cluster of backends...  That is VERY different from the common desire
for something integrated tightly into the back end; I can foresee
value to both approaches...
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