Removing an Old PostgreSQL From Ubuntu

‘ve finally bitten the bullet and am porting an expense tracking system I use for taxes from Lotus Approach to a Qt program which runs under Ubuntu. I decided to use PostgreSQL for my database instead of XBASE file formats because it is easier to trap dependencies (expense category and payee) than with XBASE type files. Yes, it is far more convenient to keep everything for one tax year in one directory as I used to do with XBASE files, but not as reliable.

Because of several upgrades and installs, I had both PostgreSQL 8.2 and 8.3 installed. The standard package manager would not remove 8.2 because it was automatically started when the system booted. Rather than read through a lot of startup documentation and find the script to remove 8.2 startup, I found a command which would do everything for me.

sudo apt-get –purge remove postgresql-8.2
This command is smart enough to shut down the database server, then uninstall the product. Yes, I probably could have gotten the package manager to uninstall it once I shut it down, but when it comes to database administration, the less I have to dig, the better. Keep in mind that this database will rarely have more than 1000 records in it. It could have easily been dealt with using RMS files on OpenVMS, but I have a desire to learn a little more Qt programming before tackling a patch/fix to Konsole so it actually supports the keypad when in VT emulation mode.

This entry was posted on November 2, 2008 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Information Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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