On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 2:42 PM, Patrick Burroughs <celti@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > They ARE routine, though. When dealing with databases anything more Respectfully, they are not routine for what's being discussed. The vendor themselves packages the binaries for each release into separate packaged versions, with each version being a different tree, for all the RPM and DEB distributions to prevent any sort of accidental upgrade from, say, 9.2 to 9.3 because they know it will probably break. It's near impossible to go from 9.2 -> 9.3 -> 9.4 for instance without manual work; for a given 9.x -> 9.y upgrade it might be required to run pg_upgrade as an example task. Having a PGSQL package release that goes from 9.3 to 9.4 seems crazy without letting folks know ahead of time, even if it's a simple mailing list post. (the same is generally true for MySQL 5.1 -> 5.5 -> 5.6, extending to MariaDB) These database vendors do not consider a point release as routine or minor, it's a big deal that requires the admin to possibly perform a bunch of work - update a config file to work out deprecated settings, run something like mysql_upgrade or pg_upgrade to get schema changes and all that stuff. Backups are always good. :) I do agree that PGSQL should have been listed in IgnorePkg as a matter of good systems admin practice, which would have prevented this problem. IMHO you should never let your DB "just upgrade" without meaning for it to happen explicitly - typically you'll need a restart of the service at a minimum, so planning downtime is key for your end users. Every once in awhile a very minor release comes down the pipe that actually breaks something important and you should be ready to roll back on the spot. $0.02, -te
