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  1. Upgrade Ubuntu 22 -> 24 may break PostgreSQL

    Peter J. Holzer <hjp-pgsql@hjp.at> — 2024-08-31T16:54:45Z

    'Tis the season again.

Ubuntu 24.04.1 has just been released, so many Ubuntu LTS users will now
be prompted to upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04.

A word of warning to those who use Postgresql from the Ubuntu repo (not
PGDG):

As usual, a newer Ubuntu version comes with a newer Postgres version (16
instead of 14). Also as usual, I got a message during the upgrade that
Postgres 14 is obsolete,. but the binaries have been left installed and
I should upgrade to Postgres 16 manually ASAP.

But after the reboot, PostgreSQL failed to start because it needed a
shared library (libldap) which was no longer there. So a normal
pg_upgradecluster wouldn't work.

In my case the quickest way to recover was to install postgresql-14 on a
VM, copy the data direcory into that instance and make a fresh dump,
then install postgresql-16 on my laptop and restore the dump. Annoying,
but no big deal for the small test database I keep on my laptop. If you
have multi-terabyte databases, your situation may be different.

I'm not exactly sure what went wrong (I got some conflicts during the
upgrade and maybe I shouldn't have invoked apt autoremove?), and you may
not have this problem, but make sure you have a backup before the
upgrade.

        hp


-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   | hjp@hjp.at         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       challenge!"

  2. Re: Upgrade Ubuntu 22 -> 24 may break PostgreSQL

    Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> — 2024-08-31T17:35:01Z

    On 8/31/24 09:54, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> 'Tis the season again.
> 
> Ubuntu 24.04.1 has just been released, so many Ubuntu LTS users will now
> be prompted to upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04.

Which I ignore.

> 
> A word of warning to those who use Postgresql from the Ubuntu repo (not
> PGDG):

Why I do use the PGDG repo's.

> 
> As usual, a newer Ubuntu version comes with a newer Postgres version (16
> instead of 14). Also as usual, I got a message during the upgrade that
> Postgres 14 is obsolete,. but the binaries have been left installed and
> I should upgrade to Postgres 16 manually ASAP.
> 
> But after the reboot, PostgreSQL failed to start because it needed a
> shared library (libldap) which was no longer there. So a normal
> pg_upgradecluster wouldn't work.

sudo apt install libldap-X.x did not work?

> 
> In my case the quickest way to recover was to install postgresql-14 on a
> VM, copy the data direcory into that instance and make a fresh dump,
> then install postgresql-16 on my laptop and restore the dump. Annoying,
> but no big deal for the small test database I keep on my laptop. If you
> have multi-terabyte databases, your situation may be different.
> 
> I'm not exactly sure what went wrong (I got some conflicts during the
> upgrade and maybe I shouldn't have invoked apt autoremove?), and you may
> not have this problem, but make sure you have a backup before the
> upgrade.
> 
>          hp
> 
> 

-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

  3. Re: Upgrade Ubuntu 22 -> 24 may break PostgreSQL

    Peter J. Holzer <hjp-pgsql@hjp.at> — 2024-08-31T18:02:13Z

    On 2024-08-31 10:35:01 -0700, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> On 8/31/24 09:54, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> > 'Tis the season again.
> > 
> > Ubuntu 24.04.1 has just been released, so many Ubuntu LTS users will now
> > be prompted to upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04.
> 
> Which I ignore.

At some point I do want to upgrade. Not necessarily at the earliest
oportunity, but for workstations/laptops I'm usually rather quick. This
laptop was originally delivered with a pre-installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS,
and has since been upgraded to 20.04, 22.04 and now 24.04. Servers are
different. They are usually upgraded when neccessary. Or sometimes new
hardware is ready before support ends ...

But I think our personal preferences are besides the point. Many people
will upgrade Ubuntu in the next weeks or months. So I wanted to give
them a heads-up that this might not be as smooth as expected.


> > A word of warning to those who use Postgresql from the Ubuntu repo (not
> > PGDG):
> 
> Why I do use the PGDG repo's.

So do I on production systems. But this was just my personal laptop.
But yeah, it reminded me that one of the reasons I prefer the PGDG repos
is that they decouple PostgreSQL upgrades from OS upgrades.


> > As usual, a newer Ubuntu version comes with a newer Postgres version (16
> > instead of 14). Also as usual, I got a message during the upgrade that
> > Postgres 14 is obsolete,. but the binaries have been left installed and
> > I should upgrade to Postgres 16 manually ASAP.
> > 
> > But after the reboot, PostgreSQL failed to start because it needed a
> > shared library (libldap) which was no longer there. So a normal
> > pg_upgradecluster wouldn't work.
> 
> sudo apt install libldap-X.x did not work?

It might have worked after reenabling the Ubuntu 22 repo. Or it might
have worked to simply symlink to the newer libldap. Frankly I didn't
try. I had a VM with ubuntu 22 without postgres lying around, so that
seemed like the safeste route.

        hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Story must make more sense than reality.
|_|_) |                    |
| |   | hjp@hjp.at         |    -- Charles Stross, "Creative writing
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |       challenge!"

  4. Re: Upgrade Ubuntu 22 -> 24 may break PostgreSQL

    Justin Clift <justin@postgresql.org> — 2024-09-01T02:32:43Z

    On 2024-09-01 02:54, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> 'Tis the season again.
> 
> Ubuntu 24.04.1 has just been released, so many Ubuntu LTS users will 
> now
> be prompted to upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04.
> 
> A word of warning to those who use Postgresql from the Ubuntu repo (not
> PGDG):
> 
> As usual, a newer Ubuntu version comes with a newer Postgres version 
> (16
> instead of 14). Also as usual, I got a message during the upgrade that
> Postgres 14 is obsolete,. but the binaries have been left installed and
> I should upgrade to Postgres 16 manually ASAP.

It'd *technically* be possible to automatically run an upgrade of the
PostgreSQL repository (via scripting?) at launch time, though just 
blindly
doing it for everyone would be a *major* change of behaviour.

Some people would likely love it, while others would be horrified (etc).

That being said, if we announce it ahead of time as a feature of a major
release (ie PG 18 or something), and if we have a clear way to not
automatically upgrade (a variable in postgresql.conf?), then we might be
able to solve this problem ~permanently.

We'd also need to figure out how to handle (say) rebuilding of indexes
that need updating between major versions and stuff like that.

Thoughts?

Regards and best wishes,

Justin Clift

  5. Re: Upgrade Ubuntu 22 -> 24 may break PostgreSQL

    Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> — 2024-09-01T16:08:21Z

    On 8/31/24 19:32, Justin Clift wrote:
> On 2024-09-01 02:54, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
>> 'Tis the season again.

>> As usual, a newer Ubuntu version comes with a newer Postgres version (16
>> instead of 14). Also as usual, I got a message during the upgrade that
>> Postgres 14 is obsolete,. but the binaries have been left installed and
>> I should upgrade to Postgres 16 manually ASAP.
> 
> It'd *technically* be possible to automatically run an upgrade of the
> PostgreSQL repository (via scripting?) at launch time, though just blindly
> doing it for everyone would be a *major* change of behaviour.

The OP was using the Ubuntu repo and for a given major version of Ubuntu 
that is pinned to a given major version of Postgres. I am not seeing 
changing that would go over well. Now if a user is using the PGDG repo's 
that is a different story, then you point at the repo's for the new 
Ubuntu version do an update/upgrade and you are back on track.

> Thoughts?

This is something the end user needs to work out ahead of time as there 
is an overhead in the process they need to take into consideration. 
Cranking up a new version of Ubuntu/Debian and have it take off doing 
things behind the scenes to the Postgres instance(s) would disturb me.

> 
> Regards and best wishes,
> 
> Justin Clift
> 
> 

-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

  6. Re: Upgrade Ubuntu 22 -> 24 may break PostgreSQL

    Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> — 2024-09-01T16:22:31Z

    On 8/31/24 11:02, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> On 2024-08-31 10:35:01 -0700, Adrian Klaver wrote:
>> On 8/31/24 09:54, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
>>> 'Tis the season again.
>>>
>>> Ubuntu 24.04.1 has just been released, so many Ubuntu LTS users will now
>>> be prompted to upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04.
>>
>> Which I ignore.

> But I think our personal preferences are besides the point. Many people
> will upgrade Ubuntu in the next weeks or months. So I wanted to give
> them a heads-up that this might not be as smooth as expected.

Major updates rarely are. That is why I tend to look before I leap. One 
way to make the leap easier is to change the Postgres repo from the 
Ubuntu to the PGDG repo on the current Ubuntu version being run then do 
the Ubuntu upgrade. The caveat being what the current version of 
Ubuntu/Postgres is you are running and whether that Postgres version is 
still supported in the main PGDG repo. Otherwise you are going to:

https://apt-archive.postgresql.org/




-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com