Re: Non-text mode for pg_dumpall

On Wed, Jul 9, 2025 at 2:51 PM Mahendra Singh Thalor <mahi6run(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > This drops all databases:
> >
> > pg_dumpall --clean -Fd -f /tmp/dump
> > pg_restore -d template1 --globals-only /tmp/dump
> >
> > That didn't match my expectations given this help text:
> >
> > $ pg_restore --help|grep global
> > -g, --globals-only restore only global objects, no databases
>
> Databases are global objects so due to --clean command, we are putting
> drop commands in global.dat for all the databases. While restoring, we
> used the "--globals-only" option so we are dropping all these
> databases by global.dat file.
>
> Please let us know your expectations for this specific case.

I am not sure whether pg_dumpall --clean should ever drop databases,
but it certainly shouldn't do it with --globals-only. In that case,
it's not restoring the databases, so dropping them seems
catastrophically bad.

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com