Postgres Configuration messed up after OSX Mavericks - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

After I installed Mavericks my postgres configuration seems completely messed up. I installed the dev tools for Maverick from xcode and I've tried putting host:localhost in the db yml but still if I try to run rails s:
could not connect to server: No such file or directory (PGError)
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432"?
If I try to start postgres manually with:
pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start
I get: server starting
but pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres status returns pg_ctl: no server running ??
I tried to reinstall pg gem and reload postgresql but to no avail. brew info postgres returns:
postgresql: stable 9.3.1
http://www.postgresql.org/
Conflicts with: postgres-xc
/usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.3.1 (2919 files, 39M) *
Since I did brew reinstall postgress I know get this:
The data directory was initialized by PostgreSQL version 9.2,
which is not compatible with this version 9.3.1.
I have a postgres query tool that doesn't seem to have any trouble connecting so I know the data is still there.
I would really appreciate if someone can help me figure this out, thanks.

Answer 1

The error The data directory was initialized by PostgreSQL version 9.2,
which is not compatible with this version 9.3.1. is caused by the incompatible data directory between 9.2 and 9.3.
if you don't need the old data in your 9.2 db, it's very easy to solve this problem:
rm -rf /usr/local/var/postgres
where /usr/local/var/postgres is the default data directory path. you may need to change the path according to your setting.
After deleting the old data directory, init a new one with 9.3:
initdb /usr/local/var/postgres -E utf8
Then you are good to go!
====
if you need to migrate the old data from 9.2 to 9.3:
a) rename your old data directory:
mv /usr/local/var/postgres /usr/local/var/postgres9.2
b) init a new 9.3 db (create a new data directory):
initdb /usr/local/var/postgres -E utf8
c) migrate:
pg_upgrade \
-b /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.2.4/bin/ \
-B /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.3.1/bin/ \
-d /usr/local/var/postgres9.2 \
-D /usr/local/var/postgres \
-v
-b is your old binary while -B is your new binary. you can get them through brew info postgres.
-d is the renamed old data directory while -D is the new data directory you just created at step b.
then you would get the following message:
Creating script to analyze new cluster ok
Creating script to delete old cluster ok
Upgrade Complete
----------------
Optimizer statistics are not transferred by pg_upgrade so,
once you start the new server, consider running:
analyze_new_cluster.sh
Running this script will delete the old cluster's data files:
delete_old_cluster.sh
d) rock with your postgres 9.3!

Answer 2

The most conservative way to upgrade PostgreSQL entails needing to:
Compile a version of PostgreSQL using 9.2.X sources (e.g. ./configure --prefix=/tmp/myPg-9.2 && make && make install)
Start the database using the 9.2 binaries (e.g. /tmp/myPg-9.2/bin/postgres -D /usr/local/var/postgres, this will keep PostgreSQL in the foreground in this terminal)
Dump the database using pg_dumpall
Shut down the 9.2 database.
Move /usr/local/var/postgres to someplace safe (e.g. /usr/local/var/postgres-9.2)
initdb a new database using the new 9.3 binaries.
Load the dump from pg_dumpall.
Make sure you hold on to a copy of your old 9.2 data directory until you've successfully recovered. Once you've determined that you've fully recovered from this situation, you can blow away your temp 9.2 installation in /tmp/myPg-9.2 and the old 9.2 data directory /usr/local/var/postgres-9.2. I'd make a backup of /usr/local/var/postgres-9.2 and would sit on it for a few months "just in case" (e.g. tar cjpf /usr/local/var/postgres-9.2-2013-10-31.tar.bz2 /usr/local/var/postgres-9.2).
Per comment, adding a few extra steps:
Compile a version of PostgreSQL:
cd /tmp
Download the latest .bz2 tarball of PostgreSQL's 9.2 source from http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/ (currently 9.2.5 as of 2013-10-31).
tar xjpf postgresql-9.2.5.tar.bz2
cd postgresql-9.2.5
./configure --prefix=/tmp/myPg-9.2 - Don't run this as root
make - Also don't run this as root
make install - Frequently you would do this as root, but you don't need to this time because you're installing in to /tmp where you have permissions to install. If your prefix was /usr/local you would have to run this command as root.