Extracts all databases in a Greenplum Database system to a single script file or other archive file.
pg_dumpall [<connection_option> ...] [<dump_option> ...]
pg_dumpall
is a standard PostgreSQL utility for backing up all databases in a Greenplum Database (or PostgreSQL) instance, and is also supported in Greenplum Database. It creates a single (non-parallel) dump file. For routine backups of Greenplum Database it is better to use the Greenplum Database backup utility, gpcrondump, for the best performance.
pg_dumpall
creates a single script file that 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. 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, and 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 Greenplum Database master server (once per database). If you use password authentication it is likely to ask for a password each time. It is convenient to have a ~/.pgpass
file in such cases.
Note: The --ignore-version
option is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
Dump Options
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-based databases. Also, since this option generates a separate command for each row, an error in reloading a row causes only that row to be lost rather than the entire table contents. Note that the restore may fail altogether if you have rearranged column order. The
-D
option is safe against column order changes, though even slower.
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-based databases. Also, since this option generates a separate command for each row, an error in reloading a row causes only that row to be lost rather than the entire table contents.
Note: This option is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
Ignore version mismatch between pg_dump and the database server. pg_dump
can dump from servers running previous releases of Greenplum Database (or PostgreSQL), but very old versions may not be supported anymore. Use this option if you need to override the version check.
ALTER OWNER
or
SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION
statements to set ownership of created database objects. 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
. This option is only meaningful for the plain-text format. For the archive formats, you may specify the option when you call
pg_restore.
Specify the superuser user name to use when deactivating triggers. This is only relevant if --disable-triggers
is used. It is better to leave this out, and instead start the resulting script as a superuser.
Note: Greenplum Database does not support user-defined triggers.
GRANT/REVOKE
commands).
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 triggers on the tables that you do not want to invoke during data reload. 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.
Note: Greenplum Database does not support user-defined triggers.
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, may not restore properly. A dump using
SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION
will require superuser privileges to restore correctly, whereas
ALTER OWNER
requires lesser privileges.
CREATE TABLE
statements. This allows the distribution policy (
DISTRIBUTED BY
or
DISTRIBUTED RANDOMLY
clauses) of a Greenplum Database table to be dumped, which is useful for restoring into other Greenplum Database systems.
CREATE TABLE
statements.
Connection Options
PGHOST
or defaults to
localhost
.
postgres
database is used. If the
postgres
database does not exist, the
template1
database is used.
PGPORT
or defaults to 5432.
PGUSER
or defaults to the current system role name.
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 query planner has useful statistics. You can also run vacuumdb -a -z
to analyze all databases.
pg_dumpall
requires all needed tablespace (filespace) directories to exist before the restore or database creation will fail for databases in non-default locations.
To dump all databases:
pg_dumpall > db.out
To reload this file:
psql template1 -f db.out
To dump only global objects (including filespaces and resource queues):
pg_dumpall -g -F --resource-queues