Upgrading PostgreSQL from 9.3 to 9.4 when upgrading Ubuntu 14.04 to 14.10

upgrade-postgres-9.3-to-9.4.md

TL;DR

Create a backup:

pg_dumpall > mybackup.sql

Perform the upgrade:

sudo pg_dropcluster 9.4 main --stop
sudo pg_upgradecluster 9.3 main
sudo pg_dropcluster 9.3 main

---

While upgrading Ubuntu 14.04 to 14.10, I got the following warning message:

The PostgreSQL version 9.3 is obsolete, but the server or client packages are still installed. Please install the latest packages (postgresql-9.4 and postgresql-client-9.4) and upgrade the existing clusters with pg_upgradecluster

Once the Ubuntu upgrade finished, I used aptitude search to check which versions of postgres I have installed.

i   postgresql                                       - object-relational SQL database (supported version)
i A postgresql-9.3                                   - object-relational SQL database, version 9.3 server
i A postgresql-9.4                                   - object-relational SQL database, version 9.4 server
i A postgresql-client-9.3                            - front-end programs for PostgreSQL 9.3
i A postgresql-client-9.4                            - front-end programs for PostgreSQL 9.4
i A postgresql-contrib-9.3                           - additional facilities for PostgreSQL
i A postgresql-contrib-9.4                           - additional facilities for PostgreSQL

Looks like the Ubuntu upgrade included PostgreSQL 9.4, but I still need to upgrade from 9.3 to 9.4.

Run pg_lsclusters, your 9.3 and 9.4 main clusters should be "online".

pg_lsclusters 
Ver Cluster Port Status Owner    Data directory               Log file
9.3 main    5432 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/9.3/main /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-9.3-main.log
9.4 main    5433 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/9.4/main /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-9.4-main.log

There already is a cluster "main" for 9.4 (since this is created by default on package installation). This is done so that a fresh installation works out of the box without the need to create a cluster first, but of course it clashes when you try to upgrade 9.3/main when 9.4/main also exists. The recommended procedure is to remove the 9.4 cluster with pg_dropcluster and then upgrade with pg_upgradecluster.

Stop the 9.4 cluster and drop it.

sudo pg_dropcluster 9.4 main --stop

Upgrade the 9.3 cluster to the latest version.

sudo pg_upgradecluster 9.3 main

Your 9.3 cluster should now be "down".

pg_lsclusters 
Ver Cluster Port Status Owner    Data directory               Log file
9.3 main    5433 down   postgres /var/lib/postgresql/9.3/main /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-9.3-main.log
9.4 main    5432 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/9.4/main /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-9.4-main.log

Check that the upgraded cluster works, then remove the 9.3 cluster.

sudo pg_dropcluster 9.3 main

great! Thank you!

thanks! 👍

Great! But I need to stop 9.3 before the pg_upgradecluster.

sudo pg_dropcluster 9.4 main --stop
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql stop
sudo pg_upgradecluster 9.3 main
sudo pg_dropcluster 9.3 main

thanks! 👍

This work for 9.5 too

👍 same steps for upgrading from 9.4 to 9.5

Thank you!

same for 9.3 to 9.6

Can I recommend that as your very first step, you run pg_dumpall > mybackup.sql so you have a backup of all your databases... especially do this before running any of the pg_dropcluster stuff... this saved my bacon.

If you face locale error, like this:

Stopping old cluster...
Disabling connections to the old cluster during upgrade...
Restarting old cluster with restricted connections...
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
    LANGUAGE = "en_US.UTF-8",
    LC_ALL = (unset),
    LC_CTYPE = "UTF-8",
    LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
Error: The locale requested by the environment is invalid.
Error: Could not create target cluster

You can use following command to fix it:

export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

thanks.. 👍

👍 Thanks!

Thanks!

👍