NAME¶

pg_restore - restore a PostgreSQL database from an archive file created by pg_dump

SYNOPSIS¶

pg_restore [connection-option...] [option...] [filename]

DESCRIPTION¶

pg_restore is a utility for restoring a PostgreSQL database from an archive created by pg_dump(1) in one of the non-plain-text formats. It will issue the commands necessary to reconstruct the database to the state it was in at the time it was saved. The archive files also allow pg_restore to be selective about what is restored, or even to reorder the items prior to being restored. The archive files are designed to be portable across architectures.

pg_restore can operate in two modes. If a database name is specified, pg_restore connects to that database and restores archive contents directly into the database. Otherwise, a script containing the SQL commands necessary to rebuild the database is created and written to a file or standard output. This script output is equivalent to the plain text output format of pg_dump. Some of the options controlling the output are therefore analogous to pg_dump options.

Obviously, pg_restore cannot restore information that is not present in the archive file. For instance, if the archive was made using the “dump data as INSERT commands” option, pg_restore will not be able to load the data using COPY statements.

OPTIONS¶

pg_restore accepts the following command line arguments.

filename

-a
--data-only

-c
--clean

-C
--create

-d dbname
--dbname=dbname

-e
--exit-on-error

-f filename
--file=filename

-F format
--format=format

-I index
--index=index

-j number-of-jobs
--jobs=number-of-jobs

-l
--list

-L list-file
--use-list=list-file

-n schema
--schema=schema

-N schema
--exclude-schema=schema

-O
--no-owner

-P function-name(argtype [, ...])
--function=function-name(argtype [, ...])

-R
--no-reconnect

-s
--schema-only

-S username
--superuser=username

-t table
--table=table

-T trigger
--trigger=trigger

-v
--verbose

-V
--version

-x
--no-privileges
--no-acl

-1
--single-transaction

--disable-triggers

--enable-row-security

--if-exists

--no-comments

--no-data-for-failed-tables

--no-publications

--no-security-labels

--no-subscriptions

--no-tablespaces

--section=sectionname

--strict-names

--use-set-session-authorization

-?
--help

pg_restore also accepts the following command line arguments for connection parameters:

-h host
--host=host

-p port
--port=port

-U username
--username=username

-w
--no-password

-W
--password

--role=rolename

ENVIRONMENT¶

PGHOST
PGOPTIONS
PGPORT
PGUSER

PG_COLOR

This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 33.14). However, it does not read PGDATABASE when a database name is not supplied.

DIAGNOSTICS¶

When a direct database connection is specified using the -d option, pg_restore internally executes SQL statements. If you have problems running pg_restore, make sure you are able to select information from the database using, for example, psql(1). Also, any default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library will apply.

NOTES¶

If your installation has any local additions to the template1 database, be careful to load the output of pg_restore into a truly empty database; otherwise you are likely to get errors due to duplicate definitions of the added objects. To make an empty database without any local additions, copy from template0 not template1, for example:

CREATE DATABASE foo WITH TEMPLATE template0;

The limitations of pg_restore are detailed below.

See also the pg_dump(1) documentation for details on limitations of pg_dump.

Once restored, it is wise to run ANALYZE on each restored table so the optimizer has useful statistics; see Section 24.1.3 and Section 24.1.6 for more information.

EXAMPLES¶

Assume we have dumped a database called mydb into a custom-format dump file:

$ pg_dump -Fc mydb > db.dump

To drop the database and recreate it from the dump:

$ dropdb mydb
$ pg_restore -C -d postgres db.dump

The database named in the -d switch can be any database existing in the cluster; pg_restore only uses it to issue the CREATE DATABASE command for mydb. With -C, data is always restored into the database name that appears in the dump file.

To restore the dump into a new database called newdb:

$ createdb -T template0 newdb
$ pg_restore -d newdb db.dump

Notice we don't use -C, and instead connect directly to the database to be restored into. Also note that we clone the new database from template0 not template1, to ensure it is initially empty.

To reorder database items, it is first necessary to dump the table of contents of the archive:

$ pg_restore -l db.dump > db.list

The listing file consists of a header and one line for each item, e.g.:

;
; Archive created at Mon Sep 14 13:55:39 2009
;     dbname: DBDEMOS
;     TOC Entries: 81
;     Compression: 9
;     Dump Version: 1.10-0
;     Format: CUSTOM
;     Integer: 4 bytes
;     Offset: 8 bytes
;     Dumped from database version: 8.3.5
;     Dumped by pg_dump version: 8.3.8
;
;
; Selected TOC Entries:
;
3; 2615 2200 SCHEMA - public pasha
1861; 0 0 COMMENT - SCHEMA public pasha
1862; 0 0 ACL - public pasha
317; 1247 17715 TYPE public composite pasha
319; 1247 25899 DOMAIN public domain0 pasha

Semicolons start a comment, and the numbers at the start of lines refer to the internal archive ID assigned to each item.

Lines in the file can be commented out, deleted, and reordered. For example:

10; 145433 TABLE map_resolutions postgres
;2; 145344 TABLE species postgres
;4; 145359 TABLE nt_header postgres
6; 145402 TABLE species_records postgres
;8; 145416 TABLE ss_old postgres

could be used as input to pg_restore and would only restore items 10 and 6, in that order:

$ pg_restore -L db.list db.dump

SEE ALSO¶

pg_dump(1), pg_dumpall(1), psql(1)