Re: Salvage older PostgreSQL data disk - help?

Conrad <bogus_address(at)nospam(dot)com> writes:
> Helping a friend who had a FreeBSD PostgreSQL server crash recently.
> This was a motherboard failure, and the data on the drives looks
> usable, but we are rebuilding the server, using a newer PostgreSQL
> (7.3) - his most recent PostgreSQL dump was a few weeks ago,
> (hey, at least he was backing it up - sort of). The version of
> PostgreSQL used to build his data is unknown - whatever was current
> around August of 2002 (7.1 maybe?). (Once the server is built and
> the old drive mounted, I may be able to figure out the exact version
> from the FreeBSD package DB, which should also be on that drive.)

The PG_VERSION files in the data directory will give you the major
version (e.g. 7.1), and you can use any server in that major version
series --- though of course you should always use the latest minor
release in the series ;-)

You will need to use some version in the same series; a newer major
release will *not* start up.

regards, tom lane