Re: alpha2 initdb PG_CONTROL_VERSION incompatibility?

Josh, Greg,

Thanks for your inputs. Yes, it makes perfect sense that we should have to re-initdb between versions - perfectly reasonable.
But, to be clear, this wasn't what set this snowball in motion...

Your responses piqued my interest... Remember, the core concern was that the 8.5alpha2 pg_ctrl reported that our 8.5alpha1-initdb'd cluster had in fact been initdb'd by 8.4! This got us concerned - as your diagnostic algorithm has suggested - that we had mistakenly built the cluster with the v8.4 initdb binary - and that all our testing thus far might have been against incorrect catalog structure, for example!

So, the scientific process; I repeated the experiment:

Built a new-from-scratch cluster, and initdb'd it with 8.5alpha1
in postgresql.conf, we edited only two parameters:
listen_addresses = '*' and port = 5433 (we use this port for testing)

Then, tried to start the alpha1 cluster with the alpha2 binary:

FATAL: database files are incompatible with server
DETAIL: The database cluster was initialized with PG_CONTROL_VERSION 843, but the server was compiled with PG_CONTROL_VERSION 851.

Again, only concern here is that the error message is misleading, and might set into motion quite a bit of redundant administrative work. Is it just that the PG_CONTROL_VERSIONs don't follow the binary numbering, and this point I simply haven't run into before?

Lou Picciano

PS - (Are you both speaking here - 'we' - as authors of PostgreSQL?)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Josh Berkus" <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>
To: "Lou Picciano" <loupicciano(at)comcast(dot)net>
Cc: pgsql-testers(at)postgresql(dot)org, "Greg Smith" <gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 3, 2009 6:26:58 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [TESTERS] alpha2 initdb PG_CONTROL_VERSION incompatibility?

Lou,

> The start command we're testing with, for example (the only variable is
> datapath: data-NEW vs. data-OLD):
> # /usr/local/postgres/8.5-alpha2/bin/pg_ctl -D
> /var/postgres/8.5-alpha2/data-NEW -l /var/postgres/8.5-alpha2/TEMPLOG start
> (above works great, with an alpha2-init'd data cluster)

Oh, I don't think there's been any attempt to tell alpha2 that it can
accept an alpha1 InitDB. You have to re-initdb with each alpha. We're
still making catalog changes.

--Josh Berkus