pg_restore

Restores a database from an archive file created by pg_dump.

Synopsis

pg_restore [<general_options>] [<restore_options>] [<connection_options>] <filename>

where:

<general_options>
    [-d | --dbname=dbname ]
    [-f outfilename | --file=outfilename ]
    [-F t|c | --format=tar | custom ] 
    [-i | --ignore-version ]
    [-l | --list ]
    [-v  | --verbose ]
    [--help]
    [--version]
<restore_options> =
    [-a | --dataonly ]
    [-c | --clean ]
    [-C | --create ]
    [-I | --index=index ]
    [-L <list-file> | --use-list=<list-file> ]
    [-n | --schema <schema> ]
    [-O, --no-owner ]
    [-P ’<function-name(<argtype> [, …])’ | --function=’<function-name>(<argtype> [, …])’]
    [-s | --schema-only]
    [-S <username>   | --superuser=<username> ]
    [-t <table>, --table <table> ]
    [-T <trigger> | --trigger=<trigger> ]
    [-x | --no-privileges | --no-acl] 
    [--disable-triggers] 
    [--use-set-session-authoriztion]
    [--no-data-for-failed-tables]
    [-1 | --single-transaction ]  
<connection_options> =
    [-h <host> | --host <host>] 
    [-p <port> | -- port <port>] 
    [-U <username> | --username <username>] 
    [-W | --password] 
    [-e] | --exit-on-error ]  

Description

pg_restore is a utility for restoring a database from an archive created by pg_dump 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.

pg_restore can operate in two modes. If a database name is specified, the archive is restored 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. The 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.

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

General Options

Restore Options

Connection Options

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;

When restoring data to a pre-existing table and the option --disable-triggers is used, pg_restore emits commands to disable triggers on user tables before inserting the data then emits commands to re-enable them after the data has been inserted. If the restore is stopped in the middle, the system catalogs may be left in the wrong state.

pg_restore will not restore large objects for a single table. If an archive contains large objects, then all large objects will be restored.

See also the pg_dump documentation for details on limitations of pg_dump.

Once restored, it is wise to run ANALYZE on each restored table so the query planner has useful statistics.

When running pg_restore, a warning related to the gp_enable_column_oriented_table parameter might appear. If it does, disregard it.

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 template1 db.dump

To reload the dump into a new database called newdb. Notice there is no -C, we 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:

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

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, for example,

; Archive created at Fri Jul 28 22:28:36 2006
;     dbname: mydb
;     TOC Entries: 74
;     Compression: 0
;     Dump Version: 1.4-0
;     Format: CUSTOM
;
; Selected TOC Entries:
;
2; 145344 TABLE species postgres
3; 145344 ACL species
4; 145359 TABLE nt_header postgres
5; 145359 ACL nt_header
6; 145402 TABLE species_records postgres
7; 145402 ACL species_records
8; 145416 TABLE ss_old postgres
9; 145416 ACL ss_old
10; 145433 TABLE map_resolutions postgres
11; 145433 ACL map_resolutions
12; 145443 TABLE hs_old postgres
13; 145443 ACL hs_old

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