Re: Is Diskeeper Automatic Mode safe?

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 7:45 PM, Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>
> cb <cb(at)mythtech(dot)net> writes:
>
>
> Ugh, yeah, I'd love to upgrade but the powers that get to make that
> decision have no interest in upgrading. So I'm stuck on 8.0.4,
>
>
> Make sure you're not in the line of fire when (not if) that version
> eats your data. Particularly on Windows, insisting on not upgrading
> that version is unbelievably, irresponsibly stupid. There are a
> *large* number of known bugs.
>
>
> Yeah, the prudent thing to do in your situation is to issue a CYA memo that
> says something like "I think the hardware is OK, but due to large number of
> bugs in PostgreSQL 8.0.4 on Windows it's easy for the database to become
> corrupted anyway", point toward
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/release.html to support that claim
> and note that 8.0.22 is the absolutely minimum version anyone should be
> running, then CC everyone up the management chain.  You're using a version
> that considers your data quite tasty and would like to make a snack of it at
> the first opportunity that arises.

Last job I worked we had pgsql and a Big Commercial Database and the
three other DBAs who worked on mostly that other database were scared
to death of patches to their dbms. Thank the gods that pgsql updates
are quite possibly the most reliable and easy to apply of any system.
Read release notes, and 99% of the time it's just just shut down, rpm
-Uvh postgres*rpm, start up, and viola you're up to date.

Pg updates are focused on security and bug fixes that don't change
accepted behaviour within a major version. I agree, not applying them
verges on negligence. Especially if you haven't read the release
notes to see what was fixed. Sometimes I read them and don't worry
about it if it's a real esoteric bug. But when a data loss bug shows
up I upgrade right away.