Moving a PostgreSQL database from one server to another

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

On Thu, 2005-01-13 at 22:37 +0000, Tony Dietrich wrote:
> On Thursday 13 Jan 2005 22:15, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> > pg_dump runs for less than one second and then exits. No error is given,
> > no output results, nothing.
> >
> You missed a step the original reply stated.
> TURN OFF the PSQL server before dumping.
> A running server hooks into the db and blocks the dump.
> 
> If you can't shutdown the server to do the dump on a production machine, you 
> are limited to SQL to backup the data, assuming the remote server is 
> available through the network.  Look up how to use PSQL as a SRDBM.

That step may not be necessary. The pg_dump man page states: "pg_dump is
a utility for backing up a PostgreSQL database. It makes consistent
backups even if the database is being used concurrently.  pg_dump does
not block other users accessing the database (readers or writers)." This
implies to me that the database server does not need to be stopped.

However, I subsequently decided that my interpretation could have been
wrong and stopped the service, then repeated my attempts. Still no
output of any kind, no errors, and no logs. Not even following the
simple examples in the man page, stuff like "pg_dump database > file".
So even if stopping the service is needed, I didn't skip it.

Not trying to pound on your suggestion here, just providing as much data
as I can to help diagnosis.

Cheers,

-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz <rpaiz at simpaticus.com>