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xenoterracide
Asked: 2010-11-28 06:59:46 +0800 CST

How do I use pg_upgrade on arch linux

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I was running postgres 8.4 on arch but now have 9 installed I want to use pg_upgrade to upgrade but I don't know what all the options I have to use are, and all the directories that I have to point it to. it asks for a previous pg binary directory... but that's gone. Will it still work? note: I've no important data, just play db's I just want to know how to do it.

arch-linux postgresql

3 Answers

  1. That's one of the problems with using Postgres on Arch: upon upgrade it won't change the file format automatically.

    I usually just do database dump and restore as upgrade procedure. (you should have database dumps anyway as a backup...)

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  2. Best Answer

    I'm sure you've read the documentation but just in case you haven't - "F.32. pg_upgrade".

    The step-by-step instructions are especially detailed.

    As a minumum you need to provide values for --old-datadir, --new-datadir, --old-bindir and --new-bindir options.

    If your old installation is missing you could always (I hope so, I've never used Arch Linux) re-install it without overwriting the old data directory. If your distribution doesn't facilitate that you could re-install (temporarily) the old version from source.

    Then you could run pg_upgrade. Remember to configure the two co-existing installations (the new one and the old one) to use different ports. And also set (temporarily) the local access method for both to "trust".

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  3. Old question, but in case someone faces the same issue, I'm writing an answer.

    Just yesterday, my postgresql was upgraded to 14.2 and I had 13.6 before. Upgrading removes the old directories so there's no way to run pg_upgrade. I got one package from AUR, but that replaces the existing binaries as well.

    But fortunately, archlinux now provides the package postgresql-old-upgrade. It contains the last version of postgresql. Install it just with pacman:

    # pacman -S postgresql-old-upgrade

    And you can now upgrade your old database normally:

    postgres$ pg_upgrade -b /opt/pgsql-13/bin/ -B /usr/bin/ -d /ramdisk/data/ -D /var/lib/postgres/data/

    Directories and versions might differ for you, but in general that's how it worked for me.

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