[CentOS] PostgreSQL 8.3.0 rpm packages for RHEL5/CentOS5

PostgreSQL 8.3.0 was released on February 4, 2008.  There are a number of
valuable enhancements in this version including Heap Only Tuples and
integration of full text search.  It is also reputed to provide a performance
increase of at least 5% over 8.2.6.

As usual, RHEL compatible RPMS are available at postgresql.org.  However,
there is a new (to me at least) project at http://yum.pgsqlrpms.org/  which
provides a YUM repository for recent updates (actually everything from 7.4 to
8.3) to PostgreSQL suitable for RHEL 4.5 and 5 and Fedora 7 and 8.  They also
provide a YUM configuration RPM for each distro as well.

Those who, like me, choose to judiciously update packages in advance of the
upstream vendor and wish to employ postgrsql 8.3 may find this a much more
convenient method than manually upgrading and updating via RPM.  Note that a
pgdump of all existing databases before upgrading, removal of the tablespace
in /var/lib/pgsql/data, performing an initdb following the software upgrade
and finally a restore from the backup are still (and painfully) required to
upgrade from versions older than 8.3.0

Note as well that some the preset configuration values in postgres.conf have
changed, that some options have been removed and new ones added so that a diff
between the former conf file and the new one followed by some manual editing
is required to preserve local customizations. I caution against simply copying
the old postgres.conf file over into the upgraded installation.


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