pg_dumpall1Applicationpg_dumpallextract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script filepg_dumpallpg_dumpalloptionDescriptionpg_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 to restore the databases. It does this by
calling 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. Shell
operators should be used 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 for more information.
Options
The following command-line options control the content and
format of the output.
Dump only the data, not the schema (data definitions).
Include SQL commands to clean (drop) databases before
recreating them. DROP> commands for roles and
tablespaces are added as well.
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 option is safer, though even slower.
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.
Send output to the specified file. If this is omitted, the
standard output is used.
Dump only global objects (roles and tablespaces), no databases.
A deprecated option that is now ignored.
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.
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
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.)
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.
Dump only roles, no databases or tablespaces.
Dump only the object definitions (schema), not data.
Specify the superuser user name to use when disabling triggers.
This is only relevant if
Dump only tablespaces, no databases or roles.
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>.
Prevent dumping of access privileges (grant/revoke commands).
This option disables the use of dollar quoting for function bodies,
and forces them to be quoted using SQL standard string syntax.
This option is only relevant 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
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.
The following command-line options control the database connection parameters.
-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 to dump global
objects and discover 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--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
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.
EnvironmentPGHOSTPGPORTPGUSER
Default connection parameters
This utility, like most other PostgreSQL> utilities,
also uses the environment variables supported by libpq>
(see ).
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 or
database creation will fail for databases in non-default
locations.
Examples
To dump all databases:
$pg_dumpall > db.out
To reload this database use, for example:
$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.)
See Also
Check for details on possible
error conditions.