Re: Dump / restore question

Garo Hussenjian <garo(at)xapnet(dot)com> writes:
> I tried "pg_restore --rearrange dump_file" but I get the error:
> pg_restore: [archiver] input file does not appear to be a valid archive
> Is this because I did not dump with the -F (format) option?

If you used no -F option, pg_dump defaults to a plain SQL-script dump,
which you must needs feed to psql to restore. pg_restore only works
with -Ft or -Fc output of pg_dump.

If you don't want to restore indexes, my advice would be to run pg_dump
twice with -s (schema only) and -a (data only) options. Then manually
edit the -s output to remove index definitions, along with anything else
you don't need. Then restore both parts via psql. This is low-tech but
gives you pretty complete control over what happens.

regards, tom lane