Re: Yum upgrade of PostgreSQL 8.4 from to rc1 rendered data unusable

On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Konstantin
Gredeskoul<kig(at)dropinmedia(dot)com> wrote:
> Dear PostgreSQL admins and gurus,
>
> I always knew that installing Postgres using Yum/RPM/etc is a very bad idea,
> but decided to try it on one my boxes that runs local wiki/Trac.
>
> I added /etc/yum.repos.d/pgdg-84-centos.repo to my yum configuration and
> installed PostgreSQL version 8.4devel_20090310-1PGDG.rhel5.i386
>
> Today I ran "yum update", which quietly upgraded my installation to
> "8.4rc1-1PGDG.rhel5.i386" and now my server does not start.
>
> -bash-3.2$ pg_ctl --version
> pg_ctl (PostgreSQL) 8.4rc1
> -bash-3.2$ pg_ctl -D /db/data start
> server starting
> -bash-3.2$ FATAL:  database files are incompatible with server
> DETAIL:  The database cluster was initialized with CATALOG_VERSION_NO
> 200902242, but the server was compiled with CATALOG_VERSION_NO 200904091.
> HINT:  It looks like you need to initdb.
>
> I do NOT have a pg_dump of the database because I did not anticipate this
> idiocy.
>
> I am looking for any help on how I can revert back to the previous version
> of PostgreSQL so that I can read the database, do pg_dump, and never EVER
> use yum again to upgrade it.

This is NOT yum's fault. PostgreSQL does not guarantee data directory
consistency from one rc to another, through beta, etc. Until 8.4.0
comes out, it could change each and every time.

Got a backup of the original 8.4devel_20090310-1PGDG.rhel5.i386
package? I'd think reinstalling that would fix your problen.