PGError: syntax error in rake db:test:clone

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi all, I'm a complete Ruby newbie trying to get a "hello world" Rails app up and running. I'm working through the tutorial, and I'm up to "rake db:test:clone" on http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/TutorialStepFive.

When I try to run that command, I get the following:

$ rake db:test:clone (in <path>/lrw/test3) rake aborted! PGError: ERROR: syntax error at or near "EXISTS" at character 18 : DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS lrw_rubytest_test

The environment is: Debian 4.0 (aka Etch, stable) Ruby 1.8.2-1 (debian packaged version) libpgsql-ruby1.8 0.7.1-10 (debian packaged version) gem v1.2.0 rails (2.1.0) PostgreSQL 8.3.3 (locally compiled, freshly updated) and a few other Ruby-related debian packages

I tried running "DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS lrw_rubytest_test" directly in phpPgAdmin, and still got the syntax error.

Have I got the wrong version of something, perhaps?

2

Hi,

the IF EXISTS syntax was introduced in postgres 8.2. So I assume that you are still connecting to a postgres server prior to 8.2. Try scrip/ dbconsole and check the version in the welcome message (first line).

Cheers,

Tobi

3

Oh, well spotted - thanks for that. It says "Welcome to psql 8.3.3 (server 8.1.4), the PostgreSQL interactive terminal."

I'm connecting to a server that hasn't yet been upgraded to 8.3.3, but it should be happening very soon.

Is there a setting I can put into a config file somewhere to use the older syntax until the upgrade happens?