I'm new to postgresql, and locally, I use pgadmin3. On the remote server, however, I have no such luxury.

I've already created the backup of the database and copied it over, but, is there a way to restore a backup from the command line? I only see things related to GUI or to pg_dumps, so, if someone can tell me how to go about this, that'd be terrific!

29 Answers

There are two tools to look at, depending on how you created the dump file.

Your first source of reference should be the man page pg_dump(1) as that is what creates the dump itself. It says:

Dumps can be output in script or archive file formats. Script dumps are plain-text files containing the SQL commands required to reconstruct the database to the state it was in at the time it was saved. To restore from such a script, feed it to psql(1). Script files can be used to reconstruct the database even on other machines and other architectures; with some modifications even on other SQL database products.

The alternative archive file formats must be used with pg_restore(1) to rebuild the database. They allow pg_restore to be selective about what is restored, or even to reorder the items prior to being restored. The archive file formats are designed to be portable across architectures.

So depends on the way it was dumped out. You can probably figure it out using the excellent file(1) command - if it mentions ASCII text and/or SQL, it should be restored with psql otherwise you should probably use pg_restore

Restoring is pretty easy:

psql -U username -d dbname < filename.sql -- For Postgres versions 9.0 or earlier psql -U username -d dbname -1 -f filename.sql 

or

pg_restore -U username -d dbname -1 filename.dump 

Check out their respective manpages - there's quite a few options that affect how the restore works. You may have to clean out your "live" databases or recreate them from template0 (as pointed out in a comment) before restoring, depending on how the dumps were generated.

create backup

pg_dump -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres -F c -b -v -f "/usr/local/backup/10.70.0.61.backup" old_db 

-F c is custom format (compressed, and able to do in parallel with -j N) -b is including blobs, -v is verbose, -f is the backup file name.

restore from backup

pg_restore -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres -d old_db -v "/usr/local/backup/10.70.0.61.backup" 

important to set -h localhost - option

You might need to be logged in as postgres in order to have full privileges on databases.

su - postgres psql -l # will list all databases on Postgres cluster 

pg_dump/pg_restore

 pg_dump -U username -f backup.dump database_name -Fc 

switch -F specify format of backup file:

• c will use custom PostgreSQL format which is compressed and results in smallest backup file size
• d for directory where each file is one table
• t for TAR archive (bigger than custom format)
• -h/--host Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running
• -W/--password Force pg_dump to prompt for a password before connecting to a database

restore backup:

 pg_restore -d database_name -U username -C backup.dump 

Parameter -C should create database before importing data. If it doesn't work you can always create database eg. with command (as user postgres or other account that has rights to create databases) createdb db_name -O owner

pg_dump/psql

In case that you didn't specify the argument -F default plain text SQL format was used (or with -F p). Then you can't use pg_restore. You can import data with psql.

backup:

pg_dump -U username -f backup.sql database_name 

restore:

psql -d database_name -f backup.sql 

POSTGRESQL 9.1.12

DUMP:

pg_dump -U user db_name > archive_name.sql 

put the user password and press enter.

RESTORE:

psql -U user db_name < /directory/archive.sql 

put the user password and press enter.

Below is my version of pg_dump which I use to restore the database:

pg_restore -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres -d my_new_database my_old_database.backup 

or use psql:

psql -h localhost -U postgres -p 5432 my_new_database < my_old_database.backup 

where -h host, -p port, -u login username, -d name of database

Backup and restore with GZIP

For larger size database this is very good

backup

pg_dump -U user -d mydb | gzip > mydb.pgsql.gz 

restore

gunzip -c mydb.pgsql.gz | psql dbname -U user 

This worked for me:

pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner --host=localhost --dbname=db_name --username=username latest.dump 

Backup: $ pg_dump -U {user-name} {source_db} -f {dumpfilename.sql} Restore: $ psql -U {user-name} -d {desintation_db} -f {dumpfilename.sql} 

try this:

psql -U <username> -d <dbname> -f <filename>.sql 

Restore DB psql from .sql file

If you create a backup using pg_dump you can easily restore it in the following way:

1. Open command line window
2. Go to Postgres bin folder. For example: cd "C:\ProgramFiles\PostgreSQL\9.5\bin"
3. Enter the command to restore your database. For example: psql.exe -U postgres -d YourDatabase -f D:\Backup\.sql
4. Type password for your postgres user
5. Check the restore process

I didnt see here mentions about dump file extension (*.dump).

This solution worked for me:

I got a dump file and needed to recover it.

First I tried to do this with pg_restore and got:

pg_restore: error: input file appears to be a text format dump. Please use psql. 

I did it with psql and worked well:

psql -U myUser -d myDataBase < path_to_the_file/file.dump 

1. Open the Terminal.

2. Backup your database with following command

your postgres bin -> /opt/PostgreSQL/9.1/bin/

your source database server -> 192.168.1.111

your backup file location and name -> /home/dinesh/db/mydb.backup

your source db name -> mydatabase

/opt/PostgreSQL/9.1/bin/pg_dump --host '192.168.1.111' --port 5432 --username "postgres" --no-password --format custom --blobs --file "/home/dinesh/db/mydb.backup" "mydatabase" 

3. Restore mydb.backup file into destination.

your destination server -> localhost

your destination database name -> mydatabase

Create database for restore the backup.

/opt/PostgreSQL/9.1/bin/psql -h 'localhost' -p 5432 -U postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE mydatabase" 

Restore the backup.

/opt/PostgreSQL/9.1/bin/pg_restore --host 'localhost' --port 5432 --username "postgres" --dbname "mydatabase" --no-password --clean "/home/dinesh/db/mydb.backup" 

1) Open psql terminal.

2) Unzip/ untar the dump file.

3) Create an empty database.

4) use the following command to restore the .dump file

<database_name>-# \i <path_to_.dump_file> 

Backup & Restore

This is the combo I'm using to backup, drop, create and restore my database (on macOS and Linux):

sudo -u postgres pg_dump -Fc mydb > ./mydb.sql sudo -u postgres dropdb mydb sudo -u postgres createdb -O db_user mydb sudo -u postgres pg_restore -d mydb < ./mydb.sql 

Misc

• -Fc will compress the database (format custom)
• List PostgreSQL users: sudo -u postgres psql -c "\du+"
• You may want to add hostname and date to ./mydb.sql, then change it by:

  ./`hostname`_mydb_`date +"%Y%m%d_%H%M"`.sql 

To restore a dump file

psql -d [Dbname] -U [UserName] -p 5432 < [FileLocation] 

To restore a .SQL file

pg_restore -U [Username] -d [Dbname] -1 [FileLocation] 

If you get user authentication errors, go to the file pg_hba.conf which is in PSQL/data folder in your program files, and change the "METHOD" to "Trust". Restart you psql serive in windows services(Win + R --> services.msc).

try:

pg_restore -h localhost -p 5432 -U <username> -d <dbname> -1 <filename> 

Restoring a postgres backup file depends on how did you take the backup in the first place.

If you used pg_dump with -F c or -F d you need to use pg_restore otherwise you can just use

psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres < backupfile

9 ways to backup and restore postgres databases

As below link said, you can use psql command for restoring the dump file:

psql dbname < infile 

if you need to set username just add the username after the command like:

psql dbname < infile username 

Try to see if the following commands can help you:

sudo su - yourdbuser psql \i yourbackupfile 

Sorry for the necropost, but these solutions did not work for me. I'm on postgres 10. On Linux:

1. I had to change directory to my pg_hba.conf.
2. I had to edit the file to change method from peer to md5 as stated here
3. Restart the service: service postgresql-10 restart

4. Change directory to where my backup.sql was located and execute:
   psql postgres -d database_name -1 -f backup.sql

   -database_name is the name of my database

   -backup.sql is the name of my .sql backup file.

The shortest way with no password prompt

psql "postgresql://<db_user>:<db_pass>@<ip>:<port>/<db_name>" < "backup.sql" 

If you are using Windows OS

psql.exe "postgresql://<db_user>:<db_pass>@<ip>:<port>/<db_name>" < "backup.sql" 

I was having authentication problems running pg_dump, so I moved my dump file

mv database_dump /tmp 

into the temp directory and then ran

su -u postgres cd /tmp pg_restore database_dump 

If you have a large database dump, you may just want to create another directory where your current user and the postgres user can access and putting the database dump file into that.

If you have a backup SQL file then you can easily Restore it. Just follow the instructions, given in the below

1. At first, create a database using pgAdmin or whatever you want (for example my_db is our created db name) 2. Now Open command line window 3. Go to Postgres bin folder. For example: cd "C:\ProgramFiles\PostgreSQL\pg10\bin" 4. Enter the following command to restore your database: psql.exe -U postgres -d my_db -f D:\Backup\backup_file_name.sql 

Type password for your postgres user if needed and let Postgres to do its work. Then you can check the restore process.

Backup==>

Option1: To take backup along with password in cmd
1.PGPASSWORD="mypassword" pg_dump -U postgres -h localhost --inserts mydb>mydb.sql
Option2: To take backup without password in cmd
2. pg_dump -U postgres -h localhost --inserts mydb>mydb.sql
Option3: To take backup as gzip(if database is huge)
3. pg_dump -U postgres -h localhost mydb --inserts | gzip > mydb.gz

Restore:
1. psql -h localhost -d mydb -U postgres -p 5432 < mydb.sql

This solution only works for Windows.

First, ensure you have already added the postgres bin folder to the "Path" environment variable (in my case this folder is C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\12\bin).

Then, open the Windows command interpreter (cmd), go to the folder where you have the .sql file and execute this command:

pg_restore -U userName -d database-1 backupfile.sql

For example:

pg_restore -U sam -d SamDataBase -1 SamDataBaseBackup.sql

(It can ask you for the password of the user so ensure to type it correctly and then click enter)

Pura vida!

If you have created a new database named mydb, To restore a .sql dump to that database with psql,

psql --file=dump.sql --username=postgres --host=localhost --port=5432 mydb 

the password will be prompted by psql

The connection options are

 -h, --host=HOSTNAME database server host or socket directory (default: "/var/run/postgresql") -p, --port=PORT database server port (default: "5432") -U, --username=USERNAME database user name (default: "xyz") -w, --no-password never prompt for password -W, --password force password prompt (should happen automatically) 

If you want to backup your data or restore data from a backup, you can run the following commands:

1. To create backup of your data, go to your postgres \bin\ directory like C:\programfiles\postgres\10\bin\ and then type the following command:

   pg_dump -FC -U ngb -d ngb -p 5432 >C:\BACK_UP\ngb.090718_after_readUpload.backup 

2. To restore data from a backup, go to your postgres \bin\ directory like C:\programfiles\postgres\10\bin\ and then type below command:

   C:\programFiles\postgres\10\bin> pg_restore -Fc -U ngb -d ngb -p 5432 <C:\ngb.130918.backup 

   Please make sure that the backup file exists.

Follow these 3 steps :

1. start postgres server - sudo systemctl start postgresql
2. enable same - sudo systemctl enable postgresql
3. restore command - pg_restore -h localhost -p 5432 -U postgres -d old_db

assuming that the dump is there in the same directory

Links :

See below example its working

C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/9.4/bin\pg_restore.exe --host localhost --port 5432 --username "postgres" --dbname "newDatabase" --no-password --verbose

"C:\Users\Yogesh\Downloads\new Download\DB.backup"