Re: Upgrade db format without older version of PostgreSQL

Devrim =?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=DCND=DCZ?= <devrim@gunduz.org> writes:
> On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 10:18 -0600, Kelly Jones wrote:
>> Can I upgrade the data format w/o installing Postgres 7.2 (my
>> "data/base/1/PG_VERSION" file says "7.2")?

> You need to install 7.2 from sources, and start the server, and take the
> dump using 8.3's pg_dump (and I'm not sure 8.3's pg_dump supports
> dumping 7.2 server)...

Yes, it does.  I routinely test pg_dump back to 7.0.  There are some
issues around embedded newlines in the data with very old servers,
but that's a server-side problem and using an older pg_dump won't make
it better.  (If you have newlines in your text data, try using
pg_dump --inserts.)

> Also, however, I bet 7.2 cannot be compiled on Fedora 11. The oldest PG
> version that I could build on Fedora 11 was 8.0, IIRC.

I think the problems you had were probably with contrib stuff.  Building
the core server without any extras will probably work (perhaps with a
lot of warnings, but ignore those).

            regards, tom lane