Re: Upgrade to Red Hat Linux 9 broke PostgreSQL

On Tuesday 15 April 2003 14:47, Network Administrator wrote:
> When you say "forces upgrades" what do you mean?

PostgreSQL forces you to dump under the old version, then install the new
version, initdb, and restore your data.  Package-based upgrades have extreme
difficulty with the 'dump with previous version' bit, unless the sysadmin/DBA
has done them prior to the package upgrade.  IOW, PostgreSQL forces a
non-standard (as compared with other system services (and user programs, for
that matter)) upgrade path -- virtually all other daemons are capable of
reading the old configs and data files or there is some form of data
migration tool packaged that does not require the old version to use.

When I upgraded to RH8.0 from 7.3 on my production DNS server, the migration
from BIND 8 to BIND 9 was a smooth as silk, all the way down to the $ORIGIN
directives, eliminating the @'s, dropping the redundant IN's, etc.  In fact,
I was not even aware of the differences until I needed to do some maintenance
on a zone file.  Nothing broke, either.

On MySQL, due to the modular storage manager they use, you can migrate table
by table to a newer or just a different storage manager.  But the old data
doesn't become unusable under the new version.  Reconciling his with our
system catalog setup is not going to be easy -- in fact, it will be very
difficult.

> Seems to me you should **always** be able to compile software.

Sure.  You can do this; it complicates the sysadmin's job, however, when your
packaged version of PHP you want to install doesn't recognize that you really
do have PostgreSQL of the required version installed.

Debian's apt package wrapper (dpkg is still at the core) is excellent for
resolving dependencies; Connectiva ported apt to RPM.  See www.freshrpms.net
for apt-get for RPM for various Red Hat versions, including 9.  I use it
myself; particularly useful when you need a third-party app that has tons of
dependencies (such as the ALSA drivers, mplayer, and xine).  'apt-get install
xine' (once apt knows from where you want to pull the packages; already set
up if you download freshrpms' version of apt-get for RPM) and all the
dependencies are automatically resolved (and installed, after your
confirmation).  For a GUI to apt, get synaptic (once you have apt4rpm on your
box, apt-get install synaptic), and you will be amazed.

And the two line incantation:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

keeps my system supplied with necessary security errata.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11