Re: Update

2013/4/11 Joshua Berry <yoberi(at)gmail(dot)com>:
>
>> Am 11.04.2013 10:29, schrieb jpui:
>> > Hi,
>> > I'm running a server using postgres 8.3 and i was adviced to update
>> > it...
>> > what i have to do in order to update it and don't stop the service?
>>
>> 8.3 is out of support so you will need to at a very minimum 8.4. This
>> cannot be done without restarting. Please check for HowTo for upgrading
>> postgres.
>
>
> As Frank has stated 8.3 is no longer supported.If you are upgrading anyway,
> you might as well upgrade to a version that still is supported. For
> upgrading from a major version (ie 8.3 to 8.4 or higher), you need to dump
> the database to a (large) file, upgrade postgres, then restore the database
> dump. These actions obviously do require that the database processes be
> stopped and started. Depending on your application and your schema, you may
> require no changes and everything will work. But it's probably worth testing
> this first on another machine to validate. the PG configuration file
> postgresql.conf is different from one major version to the next, so read the
> docs and tune carefully. Have a look at the release notes for helpful
> details. For example:
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/release-9-1.html
>
> If have never used pg_dump or pg_dump_all to generate dumps, nor have
> restored them, you should read up on and be proficient at those tasks.
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/backup.html

pg_upgrade can also be used when upgrading to a new server version.
Basically it converts the old version's data directory to the new
version's format.
You'll need to stop the database server while the upgrade is running, however
pg_upgrade is usually much faster than the dump/restore method.

See here for details:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/pgupgrade.html

There are some notes on limitations when upgrading from 8.3:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/pgupgrade.html#AEN147114

I suggest you practice upgrading on a test computer. Even if using pg_upgrade,
you should dump the original database using pg_dump beforehand as an
additional backup should things go wrong.

Regards

Ian Barwick