pg_dumpall - extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file

Description

       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(1) to restore the
       databases. It does this by calling pg_dump(1) for each database in the cluster.  pg_dumpall also dumps
       global objects that are common to all databases, namely database roles, tablespaces, and privilege grants
       for configuration parameters. (pg_dump does not save these objects.)

       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 roles and 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 32.16 for more information.

Environment

PGHOSTPGOPTIONSPGPORTPGUSER
           Default connection parameters

       PG_COLOR
           Specifies whether to use color in diagnostic messages. Possible values are always, auto and never.

       This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables supported by
       libpq (see Section 32.15).

Examples

       To dump all databases:

           $ pg_dumpall>db.out

       To restore database(s) from this file, you can use:

           $ psql-X-fdb.out-dpostgres

       It is not important which database you connect to here since the script file created by pg_dumpall will
       contain the appropriate commands to create and connect to the saved databases. An exception is that if
       you specified --clean, you must connect to the postgres database initially; the script will attempt to
       drop other databases immediately, and that will fail for the database you are connected to.

Name

       pg_dumpall - extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file

Notes

Since pg_dumpall calls pg_dump internally, some diagnostic messages will refer to pg_dump.

The --clean option can be useful even when your intention is to restore the dump script into a fresh
cluster. Use of --clean authorizes the script to drop and re-create the built-in postgres and template1
databases, ensuring that those databases will retain the same properties (for instance, locale and
encoding) that they had in the source cluster. Without the option, those databases will retain their
existing database-level properties, as well as any pre-existing contents.

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.

The dump script should not be expected to run completely without errors. In particular, because the
script will issue CREATEROLE for every role existing in the source cluster, it is certain to get a “role
already exists” error for the bootstrap superuser, unless the destination cluster was initialized with a
different bootstrap superuser name. This error is harmless and should be ignored. Use of the --clean
option is likely to produce additional harmless error messages about non-existent objects, although you
can minimize those by adding --if-exists.

pg_dumpall requires all needed tablespace directories to exist before the restore; otherwise, database
creation will fail for databases in non-default locations.

It is generally recommended to use the -X (--no-psqlrc) option when restoring a database from a
pg_dumpall script to ensure a clean restore process and prevent potential conflicts with non-default psql
configurations. Additionally, because the pg_dumpall script may include psql meta-commands, it may be
incompatible with clients other than psql.

Options

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
Emit SQL commands to DROP all the dumped databases, roles, and tablespaces before recreating them.
This option is useful when the restore is to overwrite an existing cluster. If any of the objects do
not exist in the destination cluster, ignorable error messages will be reported during restore,
unless --if-exists is also specified.

-Eencoding--encoding=encoding
Create the dump in the specified character set encoding. By default, the dump is created in the
database encoding. (Another way to get the same result is to set the PGCLIENTENCODING environment
variable to the desired dump encoding.)

-ffilename--file=filename
Send output to the specified file. If this is omitted, the standard output is used.

--filter=filename
Specify a filename from which to read patterns for databases excluded from the dump. The patterns are
interpreted according to the same rules as --exclude-database. To read from STDIN, use - as the
filename. The --filter option can be specified in conjunction with --exclude-database for excluding
databases, and can also be specified more than once for multiple filter files.

The file lists one database pattern per row, with the following format:

exclude database PATTERN

Lines starting with # are considered comments and ignored. Comments can be placed after an object
pattern row as well. Blank lines are also ignored. See Patterns for how to perform quoting in
patterns.

-g--globals-only
Dump only global objects (roles and tablespaces), no databases.

-O--no-owner
Do not output commands to set ownership of objects to match the original database. By default,
pg_dumpall issues ALTEROWNER or SETSESSIONAUTHORIZATION 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.

-Susername--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. Repeating the option causes additional debug-level messages to
appear on standard error. The option is also passed down to 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 table (column, ...) VALUES ...).
This will make restoration very slow; it is mainly useful for making dumps that can be loaded into
non-PostgreSQL databases.

--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 restored. Use this if
you have referential integrity checks or other triggers on the tables that you do not want to invoke
during data restore.

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.

--exclude-database=pattern
Do not dump databases whose name matches pattern. Multiple patterns can be excluded by writing
multiple --exclude-database switches. The pattern parameter is interpreted as a pattern according to
the same rules used by psql's \d commands (see Patterns), so multiple databases can also be excluded
by writing wildcard characters in the pattern. When using wildcards, be careful to quote the pattern
if needed to prevent shell wildcard expansion.

--extra-float-digits=ndigits
Use the specified value of extra_float_digits when dumping floating-point data, instead of the
maximum available precision. Routine dumps made for backup purposes should not use this option.

--if-exists
Use DROP ... IF EXISTS commands to drop objects in --clean mode. This suppresses “does not exist”
errors that might otherwise be reported. 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.

--load-via-partition-root
When dumping data for a table partition, make the COPY or INSERT statements target the root of the
partitioning hierarchy that contains it, rather than the partition itself. This causes the
appropriate partition to be re-determined for each row when the data is loaded. This may be useful
when restoring data on a server where rows do not always fall into the same partitions as they did on
the original server. That could happen, for example, if the partitioning column is of type text and
the two systems have different definitions of the collation used to sort the partitioning column.

--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 SETstatement_timeout.

--no-comments
Do not dump comments.

--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-table-access-method
Do not output commands to select table access methods. With this option, all objects will be created
with whichever table access method is the default during restore.

--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-toast-compression
Do not output commands to set TOAST compression methods. With this option, all columns will be
restored with the default compression setting.

--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.

--on-conflict-do-nothing
Add ON CONFLICT DO NOTHING to INSERT commands. This option is not valid unless --inserts or
--column-inserts is also specified.

--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.

--rows-per-insert=nrows
Dump data as INSERT commands (rather than COPY). Controls the maximum number of rows per INSERT
command. The value specified must be a number greater than zero. Any error during restoring will
cause only rows that are part of the problematic INSERT to be lost, rather than the entire table
contents.

--use-set-session-authorization
Output SQL-standard SETSESSIONAUTHORIZATION commands instead of ALTEROWNER 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.

-dconnstr--dbname=connstr
Specifies parameters used to connect to the server, as a connection string; these will override any
conflicting command line options.

The option is called --dbname for consistency with other client applications, but because pg_dumpall
needs to connect to many databases, the database name in the connection string will be ignored. Use
the -l option to specify the name of the database used for the initial connection, which will dump
global objects and discover what other databases should be dumped.

-hhost--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.

-ldbname--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.

-pport--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.

-Uusername--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 SETROLErolename 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.

Synopsis

pg_dumpall [connection-option...] [option...]