Migration 17 -> 18 seems to fail

[jaal2001]

Hi, I'm using the upgrade tool for the first time.
The upgrade seems not to work or at some point I am not reading the documentation correctly. So any help would be appreciated :-)

So far I understood, that I could use the oneshot attempt to migrate the db to an another db directory. As the directory changes from 17 to 18, I'm using this on purpose.

This is the log output:

docker run --name pgauto -it --mount type=bind,source=/var/lib/postgres/data-postgres,target=/var/lib/postgres/data-postgres-18 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD="<redacted>" -e PGAUTO_ONESHOT=yes pgautoupgrade/pgautoupgrade:latest
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "postgres".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale "en_US.utf8".
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

Data page checksums are enabled.

fixing permissions on existing directory /var/lib/postgresql/18/docker ... ok
creating subdirectories ... ok
selecting dynamic shared memory implementation ... posix
selecting default "max_connections" ... 100
selecting default "shared_buffers" ... 128MB
selecting default time zone ... UTC
creating configuration files ... ok
running bootstrap script ... ok
performing post-bootstrap initialization ...


ok
syncing data to disk ... ok

initdb: warning: enabling "trust" authentication for local connections
initdb: hint: You can change this by editing pg_hba.conf or using the option -A, or --auth-local and --auth-host, the next time you run initdb.

Success. You can now start the database server using:

    pg_ctl -D /var/lib/postgresql/18/docker -l logfile start

waiting for server to start....2025-10-06 09:55:41.567 UTC [43] LOG:  starting PostgreSQL 18.0 on x86_64-pc-linux-musl, compiled by gcc (Alpine 14.2.0) 14.2.0, 64-bit
2025-10-06 09:55:41.569 UTC [43] LOG:  listening on Unix socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"
2025-10-06 09:55:41.577 UTC [49] LOG:  database system was shut down at 2025-10-06 09:55:41 UTC
2025-10-06 09:55:41.582 UTC [43] LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections
 done
server started

/usr/local/bin/postgres-docker-entrypoint.sh: ignoring /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/*

waiting for server to shut down....2025-10-06 09:55:41.662 UTC [43] LOG:  received fast shutdown request
2025-10-06 09:55:41.665 UTC [43] LOG:  aborting any active transactions
2025-10-06 09:55:41.666 UTC [43] LOG:  background worker "logical replication launcher" (PID 52) exited with exit code 1
2025-10-06 09:55:41.667 UTC [47] LOG:  shutting down
2025-10-06 09:55:41.669 UTC [47] LOG:  checkpoint starting: shutdown immediate
2025-10-06 09:55:41.685 UTC [47] LOG:  checkpoint complete: wrote 0 buffers (0.0%), wrote 3 SLRU buffers; 0 WAL file(s) added, 0 removed, 0 recycled; write=0.007 s, sync=0.002 s, total=0.019 s; sync files=2, longest=0.001 s, average=0.001 s; distance=0 kB, estimate=0 kB; lsn=0/177E8F0, redo lsn=0/177E8F0
2025-10-06 09:55:41.697 UTC [43] LOG:  database system is shut down
 done
server stopped

PostgreSQL init process complete; ready for start up.

************************************
PostgreSQL data directory: /var/lib/postgresql/18/docker
************************************
***********************************************************************************
'One shot' automatic upgrade was requested, so exiting as there is no upgrade to do
If you're seeing this message and expecting an upgrade to be happening, it probably
means the container is being started in a loop and a previous run already did it :)
***********************************************************************************

So there are no migrated file in the target directory. So can anyone give me a hint, what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks!
JJ

[andyundso]

If you don't mount your Postgres data into the default path (/var/lib/postgresql or /var/lib/postgresql/18/docker), then you either have to do that or pass an environment to point PGDATA there (PGDATA=/var/lib/postgres/data-postgres). both ways work.

[jaal2001]

Thanks for your help - it helped me to find my error 😅

I managed to start the migration with:
docker run --name pgauto -it --mount type=bind,source=/var/lib/postgres/data-postgres-18,target=/var/lib/postgresql -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD="<redacted>" -e PGAUTO_ONESHOT=yes -e PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/17/docker pgautoupgrade/pgautoupgrade:latest

Upfront I did copy my database to /var/lib/postgres/data-postgres-18/17/docker (which would be var/lib/postgresql/17/docker in the container).
My inital thougt was, that the migrated database should be found in /var/lib/postgresql/18/docker. As far as I can see, the DB is migrated within the source directory. So to stay within the new directory structure I do just copy the 17/docker to 18/docker?
(If yes: Wouldn't that be an improvement for the project?)

[andyundso]

If you pass PGDATA, we will migrate your directory there. Our expections for the v17 to v18 migration is that you mount your existing Postgres data directory at /var/lib/postgresql as instructed by the upstream project.

Migrating from /var/lib/postgresql/<old Postgres version>/docker to /var/lib/postgresql/<new Postgres version>/docker is certainly something we have to implement, latest next year when people upgrade from v18 to v19.

[jaal2001]

Thanks!