I had a problem with a database yesterday on a Windows server. The service was described as executing "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.3\bin\pg_ctl.exe" runservice -w -N "pgsql-8.3" -D "E:\PostgreSQL\data\". I also had an old backup of the data directory from 8.2. It was located on E:\PostgreSQL\data_old\. I didn't really need to keep the old 8.2 data directory but I did. To upgrade from 8.2 to 8.3, I had performed an export, un-install 8.2, install 8.3, and then import. So during some cleanup yesterday, I removed the data_old directory and my database crashed. It complained that it couldn't find pg_version. I also tried initdb but it wouldn't work. It gave me an error of "the program 'postgres' is needed by initdb but was not found". Any idea on how my new install of 8.3 somehow got linked to the data_old directory? I'm not asking how to fix the problem because I had a good backup and I was able to restore. I'm trying to understand why and how it happened so I can prevent it in the future. Maybe this is a Windows problem? We are moving to Solaris by the end of May which I'm really excited about. PostgreSQL flys on 64 bit Solaris. Jon Author of fn_ugly() :)
