Re: Space for pg_dump

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 10:31 AM, SHARMILA JOTHIRAJAH
<sharmi_jo(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 3/31/09, Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> From: Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com>
>> wrote:
>> > But I need to pre-allocate some space for storing
>> these dumps (there are other databases too that needs to be
>> dumped). So Im trying to find a space estimate ....
>> > Do you have a rough estimate of pg_dump in general...
>> like 1/4 th of the database size or something like that...I
>> just need a rough estimate for now
>>
>> Sadly, there is no exact maths for such things.  If
>> your database has
>> tons of indexes and such, it might be 20 or 100 times
>> bigger on disk
>> than it will be during backup.  If it's all
>> compressible text with few
>> indexes, it might be a 1:1 or so size.  You can't
>> really tell without
>> running pg_dump.  The advantage of doing pg_dump|wc -l
>> is that the db
>> doesn't have to be stored somewhere.
>>
> Thanks...I started pg_dump|wc -l  and its running now
> Another question is that wc -l gives you the no of lines...right...
> What is the size of each line...or how do you get the size from that?

Whoops, pretty sure my first reply was just wc. the -l is a habit
from using to count lines. Do it again without the -l... sorry.