how to copy data between machines ?

Hi folks,

After searching for a while as to how to transfer data from machine to
machine, I came across the 'pg_dump' and 'pg_restore' commands.

On machine 'A', I did ..

    /usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_dump test -f /tmp/blah

Then ...

    [socrates:/tmp] desmond% ls -l /tmp/blah
    -rw-r--r--  1 desmond  wheel  540 12 May 22:02 /tmp/blah

I then scp that file to machine B, and do ...

    pg_restore -d test /tmp/test

The result is ...

    pg_restore: [archiver] input file does not appear to be a valid
archive

Eh ???

What did I miss ?

I'm using the same version of postgreSQL on both machines, both
installed within minutes of each other.

Thanks in advance.

D.