Re: Moving a database

> What are the correct steps to move an database and from an server
> running postgreslq 7.4.2 to another running 8.0.3?

I'll assume there are two hosts:
- db7, running 7.4.2, on port 5432, and
- db8, running 8.0.3 on port 5432.

The simplest method would be thus:

- Stop the applications accessing db7

- On db8, run the command:
pg_dumpall -h db7 -p 5432 | psql -h localhost -p 5432 template1

That is likely to provide the most nearly "perfect fidelity" copy of
the database on db8.

You may discover that this takes longer than you want it to.

If that proves to be the case, you can shorten the cutover time by
using a replication system such as Slony-I to copy data from the one
host to the other. That definitely involves more "moving parts" and
more complexity. But it could turn an 8 hour outage into a 2 minute
one...

You should certainly do test runs of whatever approach you try so as
to minimize the number of surprises.
--
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http://linuxdatabases.info/info/slony.html
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