Postgresql – Postgres: Missing data after Binary Copy – Is VACUUM FULL required

It's failing when trying to run the old bin files because it's missing a dependency. You're going to need to install its dependencies, install 8.4 on the new server for this task, or spin up a VM with 8.4 installed, copy the files to the VM, do what it takes to start the 8.4 instance on the VM (which means that postgres will need to know where the default data directory is). From there, I'd do a pg_dump on the database(s) in question and then restore them to the new server. That would probably give you the cleanest environment.

So, here are what I see as your options:

Using pg_upgrade

On The New Server (pg_upgrade)

1. Install PostgreSQL 8.4 dependencies and hope that your copied binaries work. If they don't, then you may need to just remove these copied binaries and install 8.4 from apt.
2. Attempt to start the service /tmp/postgres-bin.old/postgresql/8.4/bin/pg_ctl start -D /tmp/postgres.old/main/
3. If that works, stop the service /tmp/postgres-bin.old/postgresql/8.4/bin/pg_ctl stop -D /tmp/postgres.old/main/
4. Now try your pg_upgrade script

Without Using pg_upgrade

1. Create a VM or use an old, decommed server and install postgresql 8.4
2. Initialize your server using initdb (or pg_createcluster)
3. Copy your backed up data over that which was just created
4. Start postgresql
5. Backup the data using pg_dump
6. Copy the dump file to the "new server"
7. Restore to a new database on the new server

If you want to copy a complete PostgreSQL database within its cluster, the fastest method is to use it as TEMPLATE in a CREATE DATABASE statement. I quote the manual:

By default, the new database will be created by cloning the standard system database template1. A different template can be specified by writing TEMPLATE name. In particular, by writing TEMPLATE template0, you can create a virgin database containing only the standard objects predefined by your version of PostgreSQL. This is useful if you wish to avoid copying any installation-local objects that might have been added to template1.

CREATE DATABASE db_copy TEMPLATE db_org;

This effectively copies underlying files around like you tried manually. Except that is sets everything up to work correctly.

You may want to clean up your original before you do (depends):

VACUUM FULL ANALYZE;