How to upgrade to PostGreSQL on Debian machine

[sneakyimp]

i'm fairly capable with linux command line stuff. i followed a tutorial at howtoforge.com to set up my dev server using debian's apt-get command. sadly, the distro i was working from (installed by someone else) insists that PostGreSQL version 7.4.7 is the latest available. I need 8.2.3. The install commands i would use were typically like this:

apt-get install postgresql

I had everything working fine on the box...LAMP setup plus a postgresql install of 7.4.7. SO i downloaded the source code for 8.2.3 and did configure/make/install/etc. a few things:

1) psql from the linux command line no longer works. i have to now type the full path to the psql executable and it would seem my pg_hba.conf is maybe broken now. There also seems to be considerable confusion about path locations that would seem to be crosstalk between old 7.4.7 install (which must still be on the machine somewhere) and my new 8.2.3. For instance when i tried to edit pg_hba.conf and restart the db daemon:

praha:/# /etc/init.d/postgresql stop
Stopping PostgreSQL database server: postmasterThe programs "postmaster" and "psql" are needed by pg_ctl but
were not found in the directory "/usr/lib/postgresql/bin".
Check your installation.
.

2) When I did have this working briefly, PHP reported that PostGreSQL was version 7.4.7, HOWEVER my phpPGAdmin page (which was miraculously still working) was reporting 8.2.3. How on earth could those two report different db versions?

3) Little tiny baby jesus HELP this is killing me. I can do a long series of steps if someone just explains how i might go about ensuring that i have one and only one postresql on my system. The machine was in good shape before I tried to build the 8.2.3 postgresql fro source and I believe the confused state happened largely because the debian apt-get stuff assumed different directory locations than the defaults that postgresql assumes in their source.

any help would be very much appreciated.

PS: Should this be in the install directory? It's not PHP install...well it sort of is...but is more DB oriented.

[sneakyimp]

ok i got lucky here....i was able to remove postgresql like this:

apt-get remove postgresql

there were still some complaints about postgresql so this command came in very hand after that last one:

dpkg -P phpmyadmin

that purges any remnants or package files downloaded by the previous install attempts.

THEN i was able to do some cool stuff like this:

apt-get install mysql-server-5.0 mysql-client-5.0
apt-get install postgresql-8.1
apt-get install apache2
apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 libapache2-mod-perl2 php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-curl php5-dev php5-gd php5-imap php5-imagick php5-json php5-ldap php5-mhash php5-mcrypt php5-mysql php5-odbc php4-pear curl libwww-perl php5-pgsql

W00T!

fyi anyone, the mysql databases were all preserved. the postgresql ones got wiped.

[Sxooter]

And now, you officially know more about debian than I do. Seriously. I've been using RedHat for so long, I've fossilized.

[sneakyimp]

or 'ossified' 😉