Upgrade PostgreSQL from 14 to 15 on Ubuntu 23.04

Howto guide for upgrading PostgreSQL from version 14 to 15 on Ubuntu, after its upgrade from version 22.10 to 23.04 (Lunar Lobster).

TL;DR

After upgrade Ubuntu from version 22.10 to 23.04:

$ sudo pg_dropcluster 15 main --stop
$ sudo pg_upgradecluster 14 main
$ sudo pg_dropcluster 14 main

Goal

This article is aimed at those like me who use Ubuntu and PostgreSQL to develop locally on their computer and after the last update to Ubuntu 23.04 they have two versions of PostgreSQL installed.

Upgrade PostgreSQL

During Ubuntu updgrade to 23.04 you receive this message “Configuring postgresql-common”:

Obsolete major version 14

The PostgreSQL version 14 is obsolete, but the server or client packages are still installed.

Please install the latest packages (postgresql-15 and postgresql-client-15) and upgrade the existing clusters with pg_upgradecluster (see manpage).

Please be aware that the installation of postgresql-15 will automatically create a default cluster 15/main.

If you want to upgrade the 14/main cluster, you need to remove the already existing 15 cluster (pg_dropcluster --stop 15 main, see manpage for details).

The old server and client packages are no longer supported.

After the existing clusters are upgraded, the postgresql-14 and postgresql-client-14 packages should be removed.

Please see /usr/share/doc/postgresql-common/README.Debian.gz for details.

Use dpkg -l | grep postgresql to check which versions of postgres are installed:

ii postgresql               15+248                all   …
ii postgresql-14            14.7-0ubuntu0.22.10.1 amd64 …
ii postgresql-15            15.2-1                amd64 …
ii postgresql-client        15+248                all   …
ii postgresql-client-14     14.7-0ubuntu0.22.10.1 amd64 …
ii postgresql-client-15     15.2-1                amd64 …
ii postgresql-client-common 248                   all   …
ii postgresql-common        248                   all   …

Run pg_lsclusters, your 14 and 15 main clusters should be “online”.

Ver Cluster Port Status Owner    Data directory              Log file
14  main    5432 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/14/main …
15  main    5433 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/15/main …

There already is a cluster “main” for 15 (since this is created by default on package installation). This is done so that a fresh installation works out of the box without the need to create a cluster first, but of course it clashes when you try to upgrade 14/main when 15/main also exists. The recommended procedure is to remove the 15 cluster with pg_dropcluster and then upgrade with pg_upgradecluster.

Stop the 15 cluster and drop it.

$ sudo pg_dropcluster 15 main --stop

Upgrade the 14 cluster to the latest version.

$ sudo pg_upgradecluster 14 main

Your 14 cluster should now be “down” and you can verifity running pg_lsclusters

Ver Cluster Port Status Owner    Data directory              Log file
14  main    5433 down   postgres /var/lib/postgresql/14/main …
15  main    5432 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/15/main …

Check that the upgraded cluster works, then remove the 14 cluster.

$ sudo pg_dropcluster 14 main

After all your data check you can remove your old packages.

$ sudo apt purge \
postgresql-14 \
postgresql-client-14

Disclaimer

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