Re: postgresql packages for potato

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Thu, May 25, 2000 at 09:41:16PM +0100, Oliver Elphick wrote:
> One problem you will need to fix before running postgresql-dump
> is that you need to do `chown postgres.postgres
> /usr/lib/postgresql/dumpall'.  As installed, it is owned by root, and
> postgresql-dump tires to create a file in it.

one other issue is that it restores the data OK, but doesn't restore the
users and passwords in pg_shadow.

i had to fix this by hand like so:

1. su - postgres
2. cp /usr/lib/postgresql/dumpall/db.out ./users.psql
3. chmod 600 .users.psql
3. vi users.psql
4. delete everything after the "copy pg_shadow from stdin;" ... "\." 
   section.
5. save and exit from vi
6. psql <users.psql

one odd thing is that after doing this, all databases and tables were
owned by their correct owners...not sure how to interpret this fact -
maybe the users are restored correctly, but pg_shadow is accidentally
cleared for some reason??? dunno.


anyway, it would be good if restoring the users & passwords could be
automated as part of the upgrade...maybe by dumping pg_shadow before
dumping the databases, and then restoring pg_shadow before restoring the
databases. or finding whatever it is that clears pg_shadow (if there is
anything) and fixing it.

it took me a while to figure out how to fix it, and i completely
screwed up the databases on one of my postgres machines at one point.
fortunately, i had made a tar.gz backup of /var/postgres/data before
starting the upgrade, so i just reverted to 6.5.3-18, restored the data,
and repeated the upgrade again...then restored pg_shadow as outlined
above.

i suspect that most users confronted with this problem wouldn't know
what to do and would be left with a broken system if they messed around
with it too much.


apart from this (really a minor problem...but with the potential to
escalate into a serious problem if the user panics), the upgrade went
amazingly smoothly. you've done a great job, IMO.



BTW, i vaguely recall that the same thing (loss of users & passwords)
happened in the upgrade from 6.4 to 6.5.


also BTW, i've upgraded 4 machines from 6.5.3 to 7.0 so far, and it has
happened on all of them so the fault is definitely reproducible. i've
still got a few more to upgrade and i expect the same will happen on
them too.

craig

--
craig sanders