The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released an update to all supported
versions of our database system, including 14.1, 13.5, 12.9, 11.14, 10.19, and
9.6.24. This release fixes over 40 bugs reported over the last three months.

Additionally, this is the **final release of PostgreSQL 9.6**. If you are
running PostgreSQL 9.6 in a production environment, we suggest that you make
plans to upgrade.

For the full list of changes, please review the
[release notes](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/).

Bug Fixes and Improvements
--------------------------

This update fixes over 40 bugs that were reported in the last several months.
Some of these issues only affect version 14, but could also apply to other
supported versions.

Some of these fixes include:

* Fix physical replication for cases where the primary crashes after shipping a
WAL segment that ends with a partial WAL record. When applying this update,
update your standby servers before the primary so that they will be ready to
handle the fix if the primary happens to crash.
* Fix parallel `VACUUM` so that it will process indexes below the
[`min_parallel_index_scan_size`](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/runtime-config-query.html#GUC-MIN-PARALLEL-INDEX-SCAN-SIZE)
threshold if the table has at least two indexes that are above that size. This
problem does not affect autovacuum. If you are affected by this issue, you
should reindex any manually-vacuumed tables.
* Fix `CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY` to wait for the latest prepared transactions.
If you have enabled prepared transactions (`max_prepared_transactions` > 0), you
should reindex any concurrently built indexes.
* Fix for attaching/detaching a partition that could allow certain
`INSERT`/`UPDATE` queries to misbehave in active sessions.
* Fix is when creating a new range type with `CREATE TYPE` that could cause
problems for later event triggers or subsequent executions of the `CREATE TYPE`
command.
* Fix updates of element fields in arrays of a domain that is a part of a
composite.
* Disallow the combination of `FETCH FIRST WITH TIES` and
`FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED`.
* Disallow `ALTER INDEX index ALTER COLUMN col SET (options)`.
* Fix corner-case loss of precision in the numeric `power()` function.
* Fix restoration of a Portal's snapshot inside a subtransaction, which could
lead to a crash. For example, this coul doccur in PL/pgSQL when a `COMMIT` is
immediately followed by a `BEGIN ... EXCEPTION` block that performs a query.
* Clean up correctly if a transaction fails after exporting its snapshot. This
could occur if a replication slot was created then rolled back, and then another
replication slot was created in the same session.
* Fix for "overflowed-subsraction" wraparound tracking on standby servers that
could lead to performance degradation.
* Ensure that prepared transactions are properly accounted for during promotion
of a standby server.
* Ensure that the correct lock level is used when renaming a table.
* Avoid crash when dropping a role that owns objects being dropped concurrently.
* Disallow setting `huge_pages` to on when `shared_memory_type` is `sysv`
* Fix query type checking in the PL/pgSQL `RETURN QUERY`.
* Several fixes for `pg_dump`, including the ability to dump non-global default
privileges correctly.
* Use the CLDR project's data to map Windows time zone names to IANA time zones.

This update also contains tzdata release 2021e for DST law changes in Fiji,
Jordan, Palestine, and Samoa, plus historical corrections for Barbados,
Cook Islands, Guyana, Niue, Portugal, and Tonga.

Also, the Pacific/Enderbury zone has been renamed to Pacific/Kanton. Also, the
following zones have been merged into nearby, more-populous zones whose clocks
have agreed with them since 1970: Africa/Accra, America/Atikokan,
America/Blanc-Sablon, America/Creston, America/Curacao, America/Nassau,
America/Port_of_Spain, Antarctica/DumontDUrville, and Antarctica/Syowa. In all
these cases, the previous zone name remains as an alias.

For the full list of changes available, please review the
[release notes](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/).

PostgreSQL 9.6 is EOL
---------------------

This is the final release of PostgreSQL 9.6. If you are running PostgreSQL 9.6
in a production environment, we suggest that you make plans to upgrade to a
newer, supported version of PostgreSQL. Please see our
[versioning policy](https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/) for more
information.

Updating
--------

All PostgreSQL update releases are cumulative. As with other minor releases,
users are not required to dump and reload their database or use `pg_upgrade` in
order to apply this update release; you may simply shutdown PostgreSQL and
update its binaries.

Users who have skipped one or more update releases may need to run additional,
post-update steps; please see the release notes for earlier versions for
details.

For more details, please see the
[release notes](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/).

Links
-----
* [Download](https://www.postgresql.org/download/)
* [Release Notes](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/release/)
* [Security](https://www.postgresql.org/support/security/)
* [Versioning Policy](https://www.postgresql.org/support/versioning/)
* [Follow @postgresql on Twitter](https://twitter.com/postgresql)