Re: pg_dumpall and tablespaces

Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> writes:
> On 2/2/21 8:43 AM, Joao Miguel Ferreira wrote:
>> I have a dump file obtained from pg_dumpall on a MAC computer. I need to
>> load in onto my Linux laptop running postgres.
>> I got 2 problems concerning tablespaces:
>> a) during the restore step I get lots of errors about the necessity to
>> have root permissions to re-create the tablespaces and
>> b) the tablespaces paths on the dump file are bound to the MAC
>> filesystem (/Users/..../pg/....). I would need to re-write that path to
>> my home folder or '/var/lib/....'

> Do you want to maintain tablespaces on the dev machine?

> If not from here:
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/12/app-pg-dumpall.html
> --no-tablespaces

Also, if you're not in a position to re-make the dump file, you
can just restore it and ignore all the tablespace-related errors.
You'll end up with the same situation either way, i.e. all the
tables exist in the default tablespace.

If you do need to preserve the separation into distinct tablespaces,
you could try this:

* Starting with an empty installation, create the tablespaces you need,
matching the original installation's tablespace names but putting
the directories wherever is handy.

* Restore the dump, ignoring the errors about tablespaces already
existing.

Either way, the key is that a dump file is just a SQL script and
isn't especially magic; you don't have to be in fear of ignoring
a few errors.  pg_dump builds the script to be resistant to certain
types of issues, and missing tablespaces is one of those.

I do recommend capturing the stderr output and checking through it
to ensure you didn't have any unexpected errors.

                        regards, tom lane