Re: Restoring from pg_data

Hi Tom

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 7:18 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Rafael Enrique Ortiz Guerrero <dirakx(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > I'm trying to restore a BD from pg_data, (i don't have a dump).
> > I only have the physical files, googling around have not give useful
> > results.
>
> > how can i restore my db from files?
>
> If you have a complete undamaged copy of the $PGDATA directory tree,
> then what you do is install a server executable that matches the version
> that built the database originally, fire it up, and you have a working
> database. From there you can either dump, or just use it as-is.
>
>
I have a server executable of the postgres version that the DB was working
on, the problem is that i have two versions of postgres running in that
server, but only the latest version (8.4) seems to be getting up the DBs,
while the old version don't, I've checked and all the DBs are there in
$PGDATA, I've tried with psql and it only shows the 8.4 DBs not the 8.2 DBs.

What can I do?

Thanks for your reply Tom!

If you're not sure which version generated the database, looking into
> the PG_VERSION file found at the top level of the tree would be a good
> first step. You also have to match the hardware architecture and
> certain configuration properties (such as whether timestamps are
> float-based or int-based), but the server should complain if you try to
> start it against an incompatible database. Generally you *don't* need
> to worry about minor version, eg, any 8.4.x release will do for an 8.4
> database.
>
> regards, tom lane
>