The General mail list archive does cover this, but for novices like me a more
explicit set of directions might be helpful. Here's my attempt to contribute,
but I make no guarantees. Basically, as I understand it, you need to create a
new database with the name you want and then load it with your old data. In BASH:
1: create the database you want your old one (which we'll call OldName) to be
called. We'll call it NewName: type: CREATEDB NewName
2: create an SQL file that contains your data and most of your metadata:
type: pg_dump OldName > OldName.sql
3: you can now edit the SQL that you will use to create your new database with
a text editor, if you want, but the 'renaming' actually occurs when you load
the database into NewName. type: psql -e NewName < OldName.sql
4: destroy your old db if you want -- and after you make sure all this worked!
type: DESTROYDB OldName
Comments:
1: If you don't need to edit the SQL file, you can combine steps 2 and 3.
type: pg_dump OldName | psql NewName -e
2: Be aware of the limitations of pg_dump, notably that it does not cover
views and some other stuff you've created. You may want to consider creating
your views by building your SQL in a file and then running the SQL on your
database. That makes editing your views and reloading them in the future
quite a lot easier.
3: Before you do this and risk your data, check out each of these commands at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/man/
:-)
DTB