Re: PostgreSQL 8.1.0 RHEL / Debian incompatible packages

On Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 12:14:05PM +0100, Richard van den Berg wrote:
> I just tried to move my database files over from a CentOS 4.2 (RHEL AS 4
> clone) machine to Debian 3.1. Unfortunately, the server complains:
>
> 2005-12-07 11:55:04 CET FATAL: database files are incompatible with server
> 2005-12-07 11:55:04 CET DETAIL: The database cluster was initialized
> without HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP but the server was compiled with
> HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP.
> 2005-12-07 11:55:04 CET HINT: It looks like you need to recompile or
> initdb.

<snip>

> Is there a good reason that the official RPM on postgresql.org is not
> build with HAVE_INT64_TIMESTAMP ? It would have been so nice if this
> would have worked. :-/

PostgreSQL does not guarentee any kind of portability of the datafiles
between major releases, different platforms and as you pointed out,
different compile options (including for example number of index keys,
blocksize). There are defaults but obviously they were compiled
differently. The exact option here is USE_INTEGER_DATETIMES.

Just be glad the server didn't startup and subsequently crash the first
time you read a timestamp value.

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)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.