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pg_dumpall

   pg_dumpall — extract a PostgreSQL database cluster into a script file

Synopsis

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

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 to restore the
   databases. It does this by calling pg_dump 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.

Warning

   Restoring a dump causes the destination to execute arbitrary code of
   the source superusers' choice. Partial dumps and partial restores do
   not limit that. If the source superusers are not trusted, the dumped
   SQL statements must be inspected before restoring. Note that the client
   running the dump and restore need not trust the source or destination
   superusers.

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) or
          statistics.

   -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.

   -E encoding
          --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.)

   -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
          --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. 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 dump with data and
          without schema. 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.

   --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.

   --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 SET statement_timeout.

   --no-comments
          Do not dump COMMENT commands.

   --no-data
          Do not dump data.

   --no-policies
          Do not dump row security policies.

   --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-schema
          Do not dump schema (data definitions).

   --no-security-labels
          Do not dump security labels.

   --no-statistics
          Do not dump statistics. This is the default.

   --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.

   --restrict-key=restrict_key
          Use the provided string as the psql \restrict key in the dump
          output. If no restrict key is specified, pg_dumpall will
          generate a random one as needed. Keys may contain only
          alphanumeric characters.

          This option is primarily intended for testing purposes and other
          scenarios that require repeatable output (e.g., comparing dump
          files). It is not recommended for general use, as a malicious
          server with advance knowledge of the key may be able to inject
          arbitrary code that will be executed on the machine that runs
          psql with the dump output.

   --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.

   --statistics
          Dump statistics.

   --statistics-only
          Dump only the statistics, not the schema (data definitions) or
          data. Statistics for tables, materialized views, foreign tables,
          and indexes are dumped.

   --sequence-data
          Include sequence data in the dump. This is the default behavior
          except when --no-data, --schema-only, or --statistics-only is
          specified.

   --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; 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.

   -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.

Environment

   PGHOST
          PGOPTIONS
          PGPORT
          PGUSER
          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).

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.

   If --statistics is specified, pg_dumpall will include most optimizer
   statistics in the resulting dump file. However, some statistics may not
   be included, such as those created explicitly with CREATE STATISTICS or
   custom statistics added by an extension. Therefore, it may be useful to
   run ANALYZE on each database after restoring from a dump file to ensure
   optimal performance. 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 CREATE ROLE 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.

Examples

   To dump all databases:
$ pg_dumpall > db.out

   To restore database(s) from this file, you can use:
$ psql -X -f db.out -d postgres

   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.

See Also

   Check pg_dump for details on possible error conditions.