Jim Nasby <decibel@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > On the other hand, dumping a newer version database with an older > version of *pg_dump* is much more likely to succeed. You meant to say that the other way around, no? Certainly for a jump this big I'd rather expect the older pg_dump to fail altogether. [ experiments a bit... ] Both 7.3 and 7.4 pg_dump fail to talk to an 8.1 server; they expect pg_database.datpath to exist. 8.0 pg_dump seems to do OK with 8.1 ... has some problems with 8.2 though. regards, tom lane