Postgres major version upgrade

Postgres does not automatically upgrade between major versions, you need to perform the upgrade manually. Since the amount of data the application generates is small, a simple dump-and-restore is the easiest approach.

If you pulled new changes from the docker-compose repository and got an error message like “The data directory was initialized by PostgreSQL version 12, which is not compatible with this version 15”, this page is for you.

Procedure

# Check out the last version of the compose file that uses Postgres 12
git checkout pg-12

# Stop the other services
docker compose stop web nginx cache celery_worker celery_beat

# Dump the database, then remove the container and volume
docker compose exec db pg_dumpall --clean --username wger > backup.sql
docker compose stop db
docker compose down
docker volume remove docker_postgres-data

# Switch back to the current version, import the dump, and start everything
git checkout master
docker compose up db
cat backup.sql | docker compose exec -T db psql --username wger --dbname wger
docker compose exec -T db psql --username wger --dbname wger -c "ALTER USER wger WITH PASSWORD 'wger'"
docker compose up
rm backup.sql

The pg-12 tag in the docker-compose repository pins the previous Postgres version. Adjust the tag if you’re upgrading from a different version.

Note

On a from-source installation, follow the standard Postgres upgrade procedure for your distribution (e.g., pg_upgradecluster on Debian/Ubuntu) or use pg_dumpall / pg_restore against your existing service.