Thread: Backup and restore from 7.4.1 to latest, crossing platforms... issues?

Hi there,

This may be a stupid question but I feel I should ask it anyway just to be sure, since I've had problems in the past.

I currently have a defunct Debian 3.0 system running PostgreSQL 7.4.1, in which I am going to do an entire blob backup dump of all the databases in hopes to restore them on my new, more secure system running the latest OpenBSD, and PgSQL 8.0.

So my question is: Are they any issues that I should be aware up restoring on a more recent version of PgSQL, and/or issues using a completely different operating system altogether? I have some strange pg language mishaps going from 7.2 to 7.4 last backup, although frightening, I overcame them with some fiddling.

Thanks in advance,
    Mark

--
___________________
Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF,
All my base
Are belong to you.

Binary backups are not going to work across major releases so just
installing 8.0 with your old cluster won't work.

You'll need to do a pg_dump of your old setup and then restore on your
new cluster.

Hope this helps,

On Wed, Jul 27, 2005 at 12:27:41AM -0400, Mark Mikulec wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> This may be a stupid question but I feel I should ask it anyway just to be
> sure, since I've had problems in the past.
>
> I currently have a defunct Debian 3.0 system running PostgreSQL 7.4.1, in
> which I am going to do an entire blob backup dump of all the databases in
> hopes to restore them on my new, more secure system running the latest
> OpenBSD, and PgSQL 8.0.
>
> So my question is: Are they any issues that I should be aware up restoring
> on a more recent version of PgSQL, and/or issues using a completely
> different operating system altogether? I have some strange pg language
> mishaps going from 7.2 to 7.4 last backup, although frightening, I overcame
> them with some fiddling.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Mark
>
> --
> ___________________
> Roses are #FF0000
> Violets are #0000FF,
> All my base
> Are belong to you.

--
Martijn van Oosterhout   <kleptog@svana.org>   http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.

Hi Martjin,

That's what I meant.. I would do my pg_dumps using: pg_dump -U postgres -Ft -b dbname > dbname.tar

And restore them via: pg_restore -O -U postgres -d dbname dbname.tar

That should be cool, yes?

Mark




--
___________________
Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF,
All my base
Are belong to you.

Mark,

> I currently have a defunct Debian 3.0 system running PostgreSQL 7.4.1, in
> which I am going to do an entire blob backup dump of all the databases in
> hopes to restore them on my new, more secure system running the latest
> OpenBSD, and PgSQL 8.0.
>
> So my question is: Are they any issues that I should be aware up restoring
> on a more recent version of PgSQL, and/or issues using a completely
> different operating system altogether? I have some strange pg language
> mishaps going from 7.2 to 7.4 last backup, although frightening, I overcame
> them with some fiddling.

I just upgraded from 7.4.8 (same format as 7.4.1) to 8.0.3 using the
pg_dump/pg_restore method described in the documentation, and I did not
encounter any issues. Although my system did not change, I don't think
you'll encounter any issues due to a different operating system since the
dump is just a single regular file containing all necessary information to
restore your database(s), its interpretation is up to pg_restore and not
your OS.

Hope this helps,

Kilian