Thread: Restoring from pg_data

Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero <dirakx@gmail.com> writes:
> I'm trying to restore a BD from pg_data, (i don't have a dump).
> I only have the physical files, googling around have not give useful
> results.

> how can i restore my db from files?

If you have a complete undamaged copy of the $PGDATA directory tree,
then what you do is install a server executable that matches the version
that built the database originally, fire it up, and you have a working
database.  From there you can either dump, or just use it as-is.

If you're not sure which version generated the database, looking into
the PG_VERSION file found at the top level of the tree would be a good
first step.  You also have to match the hardware architecture and
certain configuration properties (such as whether timestamps are
float-based or int-based), but the server should complain if you try to
start it against an incompatible database.  Generally you *don't* need
to worry about minor version, eg, any 8.4.x release will do for an 8.4
database.

            regards, tom lane

On 2010-12-07, Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero <dirakx@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a server executable of the postgres version that the DB was working
> on, the problem is that i have two versions of postgres running in that
> server, but only the latest version (8.4) seems to be getting up the DBs,
> while the old version don't, I've checked and all the DBs are there in
> $PGDATA, I've tried with psql and it only shows the 8.4 DBs not the 8.2 DBs.
>
> What can I do?

what os + distro

for debian linux you could try

psql --cluster 8.2/main -l

and/or

pg_dumpall --cluster 8.2/main

for more info on the debian weirdness see the documentation for the
postgresql-common package and the pg_wrapper man-page

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