# Trouble with postgres 15 upgrade
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Created:** [December 2, 2025, 3:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207 "2025-12-02T15:15:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@tbarbette](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tbarbette)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 3:15pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/1 "2025-12-02T15:15:14Z")
Hello,
I launched an update after probably a year, which led to the upgrade from pg 13 to 15.
I’m trying to run the given command with my own LC\_LANG but it’s not working, I get `FATAL: data directory “/shared/postgres_data” does not exist`. And indeed it doesn’t exist… Does anyone have an idea?
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 3:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/2 "2025-12-02T15:32:32Z")
There should be a `/shared/postgres_old`.
Changing your LC\_LANG is likely a bad idea.
---
### Author:  [@tbarbette](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tbarbette)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 3:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/3 "2025-12-02T15:33:57Z")
I actually got the same error than you “/bin/bash: warning: setlocale: LC\_ALL: cannot change locale” when I tried my `launch rebuild app` which led me ultimately to this post, could you solve it in the end? The docker run commands just lead me to more problems, as stated above.
---
### Author:  [@tbarbette](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tbarbette)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 3:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/4 "2025-12-02T15:50:58Z")
I added a mapping `-v /var/discourse/shared/standalone:/shared` and now I have advanced a bit. It is weird it’s not there though. The problem might be my “app” is still stuck at a version somewhere in 2024 and the “rebuild” does not work. Just a guess…
So I had this in my app.yml and it worked fine:
```plaintext
env:
LC_ALL: fr_BE.UTF-8
LANG: fr_BE.UTF-8
LANGUAGE: fr_BE.UTF-8
```
I meant LANG and not LC\_LANG. The problem is that if I revert to anything else now it’s “too late”. I tried en\_US.UTF\_8 and nothing, the rebuild always fails.
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 4:06pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/5 "2025-12-02T16:06:31Z")
If you don’t have a current backup and can’t restart your old container, then I’d switch to the PG13 template and get a working setup, then make a backup, then set up a new server and restore the backup there. You can set it up with whatever language you like when it’s an empty database and then do the restore (and maybe the language will magically get converted?).
Moving to a new server ensures that you don’t crash your existing server.
---
### Author:  [@tbarbette](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tbarbette)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 4:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/6 "2025-12-02T16:12:05Z")
Sadly I’m already in a crashed state. I do have backups but I can’t restore them as the version change is too big and there are problems of dependencies with gem. I also can’t go back to the old version as launcher pulls automatically, a bit sad imo.
With LC\_ALL I get:
```plaintext
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0/gems/pups-1.3.0/lib/pups.rb
/usr/local/bin/pups --stdin
/bin/bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (fr_BE.UTF-8)
I, [2025-12-02T15:46:29.638999 #1] INFO – : Reading from stdin
/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0/gems/pups-1.3.0/lib/pups/cli.rb:59:in `split’: invalid byte sequence in US-ASCII (ArgumentError)
split = conf.split("_FILE_SEPERATOR_")
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0/gems/pups-1.3.0/lib/pups/cli.rb:59:in `run'
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/3.3.0/gems/pups-1.3.0/bin/pups:9:in `'
from /usr/local/bin/pups:25:in `load'
from /usr/local/bin/pups:25:in `'
bootstrap failed with exit code 1
**FAILED TO BOOTSTRAP** please scroll up and look for earlier error messages, there may be more than one.
./discourse-doctor may help diagnose the problem.
19a63b958021df0ecbc7e21bfea95f1c5ef7b039efd669b5d4af48b05d397a58
```
If I remove LC\_ALL, then the “./launcher rebuild app” stops at :
```plaintext
Performing Consistency Checks
Checking cluster versions ok
Checking database user is the install user ok
Checking database connection settings ok
Checking for prepared transactions ok
Checking for system-defined composite types in user tables ok
Checking for reg* data types in user tables ok
Checking for contrib/isn with bigint-passing mismatch ok
Checking for user-defined encoding conversions ok
Checking for user-defined postfix operators ok
Checking for incompatible polymorphic functions ok
Checking for not-null constraint inconsistencies ok
Creating dump of global objects ok
Creating dump of database schemas ok
lc_collate values for database “template1” do not match: old “fr_BE.UTF-8”, new “en_US.UTF-8”
```
With the “manual” docker line mentioned in the top post, I also had to link stuff in /etc/postgresql to /var/… as some files were missing and eventually got the same error than above.
I’ll try a new install and restore there.
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 4:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/7 "2025-12-02T16:17:44Z")
> [@tbarbette](#):
>
> Sadly I’m already in a crashed state. I do have backups but I can’t restore them as the version change is too big and there are problems of dependencies with gem.
I doubt that it’s true that the version change is too big. Have you set up a new server and tried to restore that backup? I’ve restored a backup several years older than the site where it was restored. I’m fairly certain that it’ll work. I move sites to new servers several times a month. the only time there’s been an issue is when there was a corrupt index, which I haven’t seen in quite a while.
> [@tbarbette](#):
>
> I also can’t go back to the old version as launcher pulls automatically, a bit sad imo.
Have you tried renaming postgres\_old to postgres\_data and
```plaintext
./launcher start app
```
> [@tbarbette](#):
>
> I’ll try a new install and restore there.
Oh. That’s a good idea! That’s why I should read the whole post before replying. 🙂
---
### Author:  [@tbarbette](https://meta.discourse.org/u/tbarbette)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 7:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/8 "2025-12-02T19:21:38Z")
I can confirm new install also break with LC\_ALL set, in the same way than shown above (\_FILE\_SEPERATOR\_ …). However without LC\_ALL it’s fine.
I could restore my save with a new fresh install on the latest master, thanks. Fixing those issues will stay a mistery…
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [December 2, 2025, 8:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/trouble-with-postgres-15-upgrade/390207/9 "2025-12-02T20:04:37Z")
Great!
I moved this to a new topic. If one of my responses was the solution, please mark it so to allow this to get auto-closed