Thread: How to compile a 32 bit version of postgres on a x64 machine.

It looks like most avenues for high availability with postgres are not available if one of the machines is a 64 bit machine and the other a 32.

Somebody on this list suggested I install a 32 bit version of postgres on my x64 machine.  What's the best way to handle this? Should I compile it fresh? Install the 32 bit binaries? Can I just copy the binaries from the secondary?

I presume I am going to have to drop all the databases and reload them of course.

Here are the uname -a of both machines.

The primary  2.6.27-11-server #1 SMP Thu Jan 29 20:13:12 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

The secondary  2.6.27-11-server #1 SMP Thu Jan 29 20:19:41 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 6:43 AM, Tim Uckun <timuckun@gmail.com> wrote:
> It looks like most avenues for high availability with postgres are not
> available if one of the machines is a 64 bit machine and the other a 32.
>
> Somebody on this list suggested I install a 32 bit version of postgres on my
> x64 machine.  What's the best way to handle this? Should I compile it fresh?
> Install the 32 bit binaries? Can I just copy the binaries from the
> secondary?

Copying from the secondary should work as long as you have 32-bit
versions of the libraries it needs.

> I presume I am going to have to drop all the databases and reload them of
> course.

Worse than that--you'll have to run initdb and then restore from
scratch.  Might be a good idea to save the existing data directory so
you can roll back to 64-bit if the restore doesn't go smoothly.

-Doug