22.3. Migration Between Releases

As a general rule, the internal data storage format is subject to change between major releases of PostgreSQL (where the number after the first dot changes). This does not apply to different minor releases under the same major release (where the number of the second dot changes); these always have compatible storage formats. For example, releases 7.0.1, 7.1.2, and 7.2 are not compatible, whereas 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 are. When you update between compatible versions, then you can simply reuse the data area in disk by the new executables. Otherwise you need to "back up" your data and "restore" it on the new server, using pg_dump. (There are checks in place that prevent you from doing the wrong thing, so no harm can be done by confusing these things.) The precise installation procedure is not subject of this section; these details are in Chapter 14.

The least downtime can be achieved by installing the new server in a different directory and running both the old and the new servers in parallel, on different ports. Then you can use something like

pg_dumpall -p 5432 | psql -d template1 -p 6543

to transfer your data. Or use an intermediate file if you want. Then you can shut down the old server and start the new server at the port the old one was running at. You should make sure that the database is not updated after you run pg_dumpall, otherwise you will obviously lose that data. See Chapter 19 for information on how to prohibit access. In practice you probably want to test your client applications on the new setup before switching over.

If you cannot or do not want to run two servers in parallel you can do the back up step before installing the new version, bring down the server, move the old version out of the way, install the new version, start the new server, restore the data. For example:

pg_dumpall > backup
pg_ctl stop
mv /usr/local/pgsql /usr/local/pgsql.old
cd ~/postgresql-7.4.8
gmake install
initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
psql template1 < backup

See Chapter 16 about ways to start and stop the server and other details. The installation instructions will advise you of strategic places to perform these steps.