Re: Upgrading side by side in Gentoo

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:41:35 +0200, Andrus wrote:

> Greg,
>
>> You need to get one of the experimental builds that include slotted
>> support. Take a look at
>> http://overlays.gentoo.org/proj/postgresql/wiki/ExperimentalFAQ and the
>> page linked to by the blog article you mentioned at
>> http://dev-zero.ch/blog/archives/6-PostgreSQL-Status.html
>
> Thank you.

Please forget those pages, they are very outdated.

> I have SSH root access to this system over internet only and no
> experiences on Linux.

If the system and/or the database are important, get someone who knows
what they are doing.

> Person who installed this server has left the company. So I think it is
> not possible/reasonable to try change OS in this server.

You don't have to do that - it would not solve anything. The main probem is
the old PostgreSQL version, not the OS.

> Where to get ready binaries which can be copied and ran in Gentoo ? Is
> there any how-to pages or tips about compiling PostgreSql from source in
> this Gentoo ?

This would do more harm than good so *don't*.

No matter what you do you will have to dump the DB to upgrade it from
8.1.x anyway so some downtime is unavoidable. Depending on the contents
you may even have to fix some bits of the schema since 8.3 is more strict
than 8.1 in some ways. This is the hard part, and it has *nothing* to do
with Gentoo; upgrading your installation is the easiest part and will only
take a few minutes since it is completely automated (2 or 3 commands).

If you are willing to pay for professional help feel free to email me.

-h