pg_dumpall — extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file
pg_dumpall
[connection-option
...] [option
...]
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 to restore the databases. It does this by calling pg_dump 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 33.15 for more information.
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
). This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly
useful for making dumps that can be loaded into
non-PostgreSQL databases.
table
(column
, ...) VALUES
...
--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-publications
Do not dump publications.
--no-role-passwords
Do not dump passwords for roles. When restored, roles will have a
null password, and password authentication will always fail until the
password is set. Since password values aren't needed when this option
is specified, the role information is read from the catalog
view pg_roles
instead
of pg_authid
. Therefore, this option also
helps if access to pg_authid
is restricted by
some security policy.
--no-security-labels
Do not dump security labels.
--no-subscriptions
Do not dump subscriptions.
--no-sync
By default, pg_dumpall
will wait for all files
to be written safely to disk. This option causes
pg_dumpall
to return without waiting, which is
faster, but means that a subsequent operating system crash can leave
the dump corrupt. Generally, this option is useful for testing
but should not be used when dumping data from production installation.
--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 option is recommended when
dumping a database from a server whose PostgreSQL
major version is different from pg_dumpall's, or when
the output is intended to be loaded into a server of a different
major version. By default, pg_dumpall quotes only
identifiers that are reserved words in its own major version.
This sometimes results in compatibility issues when dealing with
servers of other versions that may have slightly different sets
of reserved words. Using --quote-all-identifiers
prevents
such issues, at the price of a harder-to-read dump script.
--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 33.1.1 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.
PGHOST
PGOPTIONS
PGPORT
PGUSER
Default connection parameters
This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 33.14).
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.
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.)
Check pg_dump for details on possible error conditions.