Switched to PostgreSQL

[Paul Vixie]

David Goodenough wrote on 2019-04-11 08:35:

>> On Thursday, 11 April 2019 13:07:10 BST Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:
>> Regarding PostgreSQL, I always had feeling that upgrade of 
>> PostgreSQL is not so straightforward as upgrade of MySQL. 
>> PostgreSQL DB must be exported, than cluster upgraded, settings 
>> restored and old DB imported. How do users of PostgreSQL and 
>> Akonadi handle this when upgrading their distribution?
> 
> I have been using Postgresql ever since Akonadi started, and the upgrade 
> just means that you have to remember to stop akonadi before the upgrade, 
> then do the upgrade, and then restart akonadi. My system takes backups 
> every day so I never did an extra one, and I have never needed to use 
> the backup. I have also never needed to to anything with any settings. 
> This is on Debian.

i've had an experience of a third kind (counting #1 and #2 above).

when suse-tumbleweed gave me a new major release of postgres recently, 
the server that akonadi starts under my UID refused to launch. while 
there is an in-place-upgrade method now, so as to avoid export & import, 
akonadi's database driver is unaware of this. i briefly considered doing 
this operation by hand, until i realized, i've been simply removing the 
database and letting akonadi rebuild it, every week or less, so i just 
did that. yes, it loses track of all my Sent, Drafts, Templates, and 
Favorites. and if i had any filters it would lose those too. so, this 
technique isn't for everybody.

for minor releases like 10.x to 10.(x+1), the server restarts fine. it's 
only for major releases like 9.x to 10.x, that special work is required. 
i expect that due to the performance and stability problems in mariadb, 
postgresql will shortly become the akonadi default, at which time it may 
acquire the skill of running the postgresql in-place-upgrade procedure, 
and may start to use postgresql's built-in full text index features, vs. 
maintaining a separate database table for the index, as it does today.

-- 
P Vixie