On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 06:36:26PM +0100, mike dixon wrote: > Tried a couple other places and aren't getting anywhere. > > A windows xp program I use uses pgsql; I'd like to create a backup of the db but from within linux without xp running (I run xp in vmware; and the xp db backup will be written to an ext* partition). I have the same rev pgsql installed on xp and linux (8.0.3 IIRC); the xp/pgsql db is on an NTFS partition and I mount the disc read-only. You'll be unable to start the database with the disk mounted read-only. If you want to create a backup of the DB you have three options that are likely to work. 1) Create a filesystem level backup of the data directory 2) Boot the virtual machine, start postgresql and run a pg_dump backup under XP. 3) Boot the virtual machine, start postgresql and then run a pg_dump backup under Linux, connecting to the virtual machine over the VMWare virtual network. If you remount the NTFS partition read-write (does that work on Linux these days reliably?) you may well be able to get a linux postmaster to look at it, but I'd be concerned about trashing the data. Not something to try as a backup attempt. Cheers, Steve > My problem is two-fold: > > 1. What parameters to start the linux pgsql with for this circumstance if not the defaults; > > 2. How to point the linux pgsql/pg_dump to the xp pg's data to do the backup. > > Can I just start the linux pgsql with its defaults? If so, how do I point linux pg_dump to the pgsql db data in an xp dir ("/mnt/Program Files/Postgresql/8.0/data")? > > If linux pgsql defaults aren't good enough for this circumstance, what do I need to change? > > Also, if the xp pgsql db requires a pw when working with it under xp, if xp isn't running and I can use the linux pg_dump for this do I still need the xp pgsql pw? Is there any way to pass that to the linux pg_dump on the cmd line so I can put this operation in a script? ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org