Re: Forgot to dump old data before re-installing machine

On Fri, 18 Jan 2008, Dave Page wrote:

> For just about zero cost we could drop something like:
> --------
> Architecture: Darwin snake 8.11.1 Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.1: Wed
> Oct 10 18:23:28 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.25.20~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 i386
>
> Configuration: '--prefix=/usr/local/pgsql83/'
> '--enable-integer-datetimes' '--with-openssl' '--with-perl'
> '--with-python' '--with-tcl' '--without-tk' '--with-bonjour'
> '--with-pam' '--with-krb5' 'CFLAGS=-O -g -arch i386 -arch ppc'
> 'LDFLAGS=-ltcl'
> --------
> in a file in $PGDATA

Stepping away from the question of whether it would have helped in this
specific case for a second, around once a month or so there's someone in a
panic here because they have a filesystem copy of a database they can't
figure out how to use.  Often the original server is a puddle of molten
metal or something by that point and the person trying to restore the data
is rather stressed.

The usual advice, telling them to replicate the binaries used to create it
in the first place, isn't always the easiest to follow.  It seems to me
that including a "environment at cluster creation" note in $PGDATA like
Dave suggests would be helpful for these cases; PG_VERSION just isn't
enough information.  I'd also throw in the locale information used for the
cluster, as that seems like something it would be nice to have in simple
text form as well there and is also a spot people are confused about.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD