On Fri, 22 Aug 2008, Tena Sakai wrote:
Many thanks, Jeff.
I am now clued in as to what "postgres" means in the
context of "psql -f infile postgres". Also, thanks
for a tip for stdout and stderr redirection.
What I am still a bit shaky is whether or not I should
issue "createdb" prior to restore. I would appreciate
it if you could elucidate.
No, if you look at the dumpall file, it contains all the 'create database'
commands to recreate the DBs that were dumped.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Frost [mailto:jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Fri 8/22/2008 3:18 PM
To: Tena Sakai
Cc: pgsql-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] restoring from dump
On Fri, 22 Aug 2008, Tena Sakai wrote:
Hi Everybody,
I had a machine crash a couple of days ago, from which
I have recovered (ie., postgres is running now), but I
want to restore from a dump I had made. The dump is
made by pg_dumpall and I have a gzipped file.
I am a bit unclear as to how to proceed.
(A) I get rid of what I have now and use createdb to
make a "new" database and use psql.
(B) Don't bother with createdb and let the tables be
overwritten.
Also the manual tells me (in section 24.1.2):
psql -f infile postgres
The last parameter: "postgres" is this the database
super-user? If so, do I need to spell it out if I am
logged in as user postgres? If not, what is this?
Tena,
If you have a gzipped dumpall file, then you would restore it like so:
zcat dumpall.gz | psql postgres
I generally redirect the stdout and stderr output to files for later review
like this:
zcat dumpall.gz | psql postgres > /tmp/restore.out 2> /tmp/restore.err
In this case 'postgres' is the initial database that you're connecting to with
psql. This is sometimes called the maintenance database. The dumpall file
will contain all the create database commands necessary for restoring every
database that was dumped.
--
Jeff Frost, Owner <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Frost Consulting, LLC http://www.frostconsultingllc.com/
Phone: 916-647-6411 FAX: 916-405-4032
