Re: pg_dump why no indicator of completion

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Ron, 

Are you writing that pg_dump is unfit for purpose and that I should be using a commercial backup solution instead?

rik.

On Mon, May 1, 2023 at 9:43 AM Ron <ronljohnsonjr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On 5/1/23 07:56, richard coleman wrote:
Ron, 
So what you are saying is that I have to write a shell script around pg_dump to catch the exit code of pg_dump since the developers of pg_dump didn't have pg_dump simply write an exit message?

Since multiple pg_dump commands are often run at the same command prompt, and they can take hours, if not days to run,

Running a days-long pg_dump at any time except special occasions isn't very wise.  Especially from a command prompt.

Binary backup/restore programs are much faster (if for no other reason than they let you do incremental and differential backups).

and there are a myriad of other commands the will be run in the interim, any exit code generated by pg_dump with be lost in the flotsam and jetsam of the multitude of exit codes created by every other command run between the calling of pg_dump and it's eventual termination. It could have completed successfully, crashed, been killed, etc.

Or am I mistaken?

thanks, 
rik. 

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 11:28 PM Ron <ronljohnsonjr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 4/30/23 19:18, richard coleman wrote:
Hi all, 

I've been working with pg_dump and one thing that's always struck me as strange is that there never seems to be an indication in the log that the pg_dump process completed successfully.

For example, I've been running a bunch of backups with pg_dump in directory mode with multiple jobs.  When I come back several hours later there are no pg_dump processes running.  The log is filled with:
dumping contents of foo
finished item 123456 of TABLE DATA bar
etc.

Other than trying to restore the multi terabyte database somewhere else is there any way to know that it actually finished successfully?

Why doesn't pg_dump add a line in the output like:
pg_backup finished
when it's completed successfully? 

This seems like a terrible oversight.

Am I missing something obvious?

"They" expect you to do the Unix Thing and check $?. Thus, that's what I do; any non-zero value generates an email with a scary subject line, the specifics of which are based on the exact code value.  I'm not near my work computer; otherwise I'd share them with you.

--
Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia.

--
Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia.

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