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Comment by fhueller | Hacker News Reader

> how to completely uninstall and reinstall postgresql on a debian distribution without losing the data in the database.

https://www.phind.com/search?cache=lrcs0vmo0wte5x6igp5i3607

Still seem to struggle on basic instructions, and even understanding what it itself is doing.

   sudo rm -rf /etc/postgresql
   sudo rm -rf /var/lib/postgresql
   sudo rm -rf /var/log/postgresql

> This process removes all PostgreSQL components, cleans up leftover files, and reinstalls a fresh copy. By preserving the data directory (/var/lib/postgresql), we ensure that existing databases are retained. This method provides a clean slate for PostgreSQL while maintaining continuity of stored data.

Did we now?

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I asked a bunch of models to review the Phind response at

https://beta.gitsense.com/?chats=a5d6523c-0ab8-41a8-b874-b31...

The left side contains the Phind response that I got and the right side contains a review of the response.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet, GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini was not too happy with the response and called out the contradiction.

Edit: Chat has been disabled as I don't want to incur an unwanted bill

Is the problem that the antonym is a substring within "without losing the data in the database"? I've seen problems with opposites for LLMs before. If you specify "retaining the data" or "keeping the data" does it get it right?

That's a red herring.

The problem is that these are fundamentally NOT reasoning systems. Even when contorted into "reasoning" models, these are just stochastic parrots guessing the next words in the hopes that it's the correct reasoning "step" in the context.

No approach is going to meaningfully work here. Fiddling with the prompt may get you better guesses, but they will always be guesses. Even without the antonym it's just a diceroll on whether the model will skip or add a step.

I have just opened your link and it does not contain the exact text you quoted anymore, now it is:

> This process removes all PostgreSQL components except the data directory, ensuring existing databases are retained during the reinstall. It provides a clean slate for PostgreSQL while maintaining continuity of stored data. Always backup important data before performing major system changes.

And as the first source it cites exactly your comment, strange

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42586189

Does that site generate a new page for each user, or something like that? My copy seemed to have more sensible directions (it says to backup the database, remove everything, reinstall, and then restore from the backup). As someone who doesn’t work on databases, I can’t really tell if these are good instructions, and it is throwing some “there ought to be a tool for this/it is unusual to manually rm stuff” flags in the back of my head. But at least it isn’t totally silly…

My guess is that it tried to fuse together an answer to 2 different procedures: A) completely uninstall and B) (re)install without losing data. It doesn't know what you configured as the data directory, or if it is a default Debian installation. Prompt is too vague.

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