pg_dumpall - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

pg_dumpall - extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file

SYNOPSIS

pg_dumpall [connection-option...] [option...]

DESCRIPTION

pg_dumpall is a utility for writing out (“dumping”) all PostgreSQL databases of a cluster
into one script file. The script file contains SQL commands that can be used as input to
psql(1) to restore the databases. It does this by calling pg_dump(1) for each database in
a cluster. pg_dumpall also dumps global objects that are common to all databases.
(pg_dump does not save these objects.) This currently includes information about database
users and groups, tablespaces, and properties such as access permissions that apply to
databases as a whole.

Since pg_dumpall reads tables from all databases you will most likely have to connect as a
database superuser in order to produce a complete dump. Also you will need superuser
privileges to execute the saved script in order to be allowed to add users and groups, and
to create databases.

The SQL script will be written to the standard output. Use the [-f|file] option or shell
operators to redirect it into a file.

pg_dumpall needs to connect several times to the PostgreSQL server (once per database). If
you use password authentication it will ask for a password each time. It is convenient to
have a ~/.pgpass file in such cases. See Section 31.15, “The Password File”, in the
documentation for more information.

OPTIONS

The following command-line options control the content and format of the output.

-a
--data-only
Dump only the data, not the schema (data definitions).

-c
--clean
Include SQL commands to clean (drop) databases before recreating them. DROP commands
for roles and tablespaces are added as well.

-f filename
--file=filename
Send output to the specified file. If this is omitted, the standard output is used.

-g
--globals-only
Dump only global objects (roles and tablespaces), no databases.

-o
--oids
Dump object identifiers (OIDs) as part of the data for every table. Use this option if
your application references the OID columns in some way (e.g., in a foreign key
constraint). Otherwise, this option should not be used.

-O
--no-owner
Do not output commands to set ownership of objects to match the original database. By
default, pg_dumpall issues ALTER OWNER or SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION statements to set
ownership of created schema elements. These statements will fail when the script is
run unless it is started by a superuser (or the same user that owns all of the objects
in the script). To make a script that can be restored by any user, but will give that
user ownership of all the objects, specify -O.

-r
--roles-only
Dump only roles, no databases or tablespaces.

-s
--schema-only
Dump only the object definitions (schema), not data.

-S username
--superuser=username
Specify the superuser user name to use when disabling triggers. This is relevant only
if --disable-triggers is used. (Usually, it's better to leave this out, and instead
start the resulting script as superuser.)

-t
--tablespaces-only
Dump only tablespaces, no databases or roles.

-v
--verbose
Specifies verbose mode. This will cause pg_dumpall to output start/stop times to the
dump file, and progress messages to standard error. It will also enable verbose output
in pg_dump.

-V
--version
Print the pg_dumpall version and exit.

-x
--no-privileges
--no-acl
Prevent dumping of access privileges (grant/revoke commands).

--binary-upgrade
This option is for use by in-place upgrade utilities. Its use for other purposes is
not recommended or supported. The behavior of the option may change in future releases
without notice.

--column-inserts
--attribute-inserts
Dump data as INSERT commands with explicit column names (INSERT INTO table (column,
...) VALUES ...). This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making
dumps that can be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases.

--disable-dollar-quoting
This option disables the use of dollar quoting for function bodies, and forces them to
be quoted using SQL standard string syntax.

--disable-triggers
This option is relevant only when creating a data-only dump. It instructs pg_dumpall
to include commands to temporarily disable triggers on the target tables while the
data is reloaded. Use this if you have referential integrity checks or other triggers
on the tables that you do not want to invoke during data reload.

Presently, the commands emitted for --disable-triggers must be done as superuser. So,
you should also specify a superuser name with -S, or preferably be careful to start
the resulting script as a superuser.

--if-exists
Use conditional commands (i.e. add an IF EXISTS clause) to clean databases and other
objects. This option is not valid unless --clean is also specified.

--inserts
Dump data as INSERT commands (rather than COPY). This will make restoration very slow;
it is mainly useful for making dumps that can be loaded into non-PostgreSQL databases.
Note that the restore might fail altogether if you have rearranged column order. The
--column-inserts option is safer, though even slower.

--lock-wait-timeout=timeout
Do not wait forever to acquire shared table locks at the beginning of the dump.
Instead, fail if unable to lock a table within the specified timeout. The timeout may
be specified in any of the formats accepted by SET statement_timeout. Allowed values
vary depending on the server version you are dumping from, but an integer number of
milliseconds is accepted by all versions since 7.3. This option is ignored when
dumping from a pre-7.3 server.

--no-security-labels
Do not dump security labels.

--no-tablespaces
Do not output commands to create tablespaces nor select tablespaces for objects. With
this option, all objects will be created in whichever tablespace is the default during
restore.

--no-unlogged-table-data
Do not dump the contents of unlogged tables. This option has no effect on whether or
not the table definitions (schema) are dumped; it only suppresses dumping the table
data.

--quote-all-identifiers
Force quoting of all identifiers. This may be useful when dumping a database for
migration to a future version that may have introduced additional keywords.

--use-set-session-authorization
Output SQL-standard SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION commands instead of ALTER OWNER commands
to determine object ownership. This makes the dump more standards compatible, but
depending on the history of the objects in the dump, might not restore properly.

-?
--help
Show help about pg_dumpall command line arguments, and exit.

The following command-line options control the database connection parameters.

-d connstr
--dbname=connstr
Specifies parameters used to connect to the server, as a connection string. See
Section 31.1.1, “Connection Strings”, in the documentation for more information.

The option is called --dbname for consistency with other client applications, but
because pg_dumpall needs to connect to many databases, database name in the connection
string will be ignored. Use -l option to specify the name of the database used to dump
global objects and to discover what other databases should be dumped.

-h host
--host=host
Specifies the host name of the machine on which the database server is running. If the
value begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket. The
default is taken from the PGHOST environment variable, if set, else a Unix domain
socket connection is attempted.

-l dbname
--database=dbname
Specifies the name of the database to connect to for dumping global objects and
discovering what other databases should be dumped. If not specified, the postgres
database will be used, and if that does not exist, template1 will be used.

-p port
--port=port
Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server
is listening for connections. Defaults to the PGPORT environment variable, if set, or
a compiled-in default.

-U username
--username=username
User name to connect as.

-w
--no-password
Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a
password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection
attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user
is present to enter a password.

-W
--password
Force pg_dumpall to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

This option is never essential, since pg_dumpall will automatically prompt for a
password if the server demands password authentication. However, pg_dumpall will waste
a connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is
worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

Note that the password prompt will occur again for each database to be dumped.
Usually, it's better to set up a ~/.pgpass file than to rely on manual password entry.

--role=rolename
Specifies a role name to be used to create the dump. This option causes pg_dumpall to
issue a SET ROLE rolename command after connecting to the database. It is useful when
the authenticated user (specified by -U) lacks privileges needed by pg_dumpall, but
can switch to a role with the required rights. Some installations have a policy
against logging in directly as a superuser, and use of this option allows dumps to be
made without violating the policy.

ENVIRONMENT

PGHOST
PGOPTIONS
PGPORT
PGUSER
Default connection parameters

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables
supported by libpq (see Section 31.14, “Environment Variables”, in the documentation).

NOTES

Since pg_dumpall calls pg_dump internally, some diagnostic messages will refer to pg_dump.

Once restored, it is wise to run ANALYZE on each database so the optimizer has useful
statistics. You can also run vacuumdb -a -z to analyze all databases.

pg_dumpall requires all needed tablespace directories to exist before the restore;
otherwise, database creation will fail for databases in non-default locations.

EXAMPLES

To dump all databases:

$ pg_dumpall > db.out

To reload database(s) from this file, you can use:

$ psql -f db.out postgres

(It is not important to which database you connect here since the script file created by
pg_dumpall will contain the appropriate commands to create and connect to the saved
databases.)

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