pg_upgrade Application pg_upgrade Allows upgrade from a previous release without reloading data 1998-10-04 pg_upgrade pg_upgrade [-f input_file] old_data_dir 1998-10-04 pg_upgrade is a utility for upgrading from a previous PostgreSQL release without reloading all the data. First, to be safe, back up your data directory. Then, use: % pg_dumpall -s -z >db.out to dump out your old database definitions without any data. Stop the postmaster and all backends. Then rename (using mv) your old pgsql /data directory to /data.old and do a make install to install the new binaries. Run initdb to create a new template1 database containing the system tables for the new release. Start the new postmaster, cd to the pgsql main directory, and type: % pg_upgrade -f db.out data.old The system will do some checking to make sure everything is properly configured, and run your db.out script to create all the databases and tables you had, but with no data. It will then move the data files from /data.old into the proper /data directory. You can then check out the data. You can delete the /data.old directory when you are finished.