On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 11:12 PM, David Johnston <polobo@yahoo.com> wrote:
Having recently had a pg_dump error out due to not having enough disk it occurs to me that it would be nice for pg_dump to remove the partial dump file it was creating (if possible/known) instead of having it sit around taking up that last bit of available space and itself being unusable for restore purposes anyway. Given these tend to be large the benefit to cleanup seems quite strong and fairly direct to accomplish since we just created the file only a short while previous. Call it a beginner or part-time-dba usability feature.
I don't think I like this. If I unexpectedly filled up a partition with a dump file, I think the first thing I would want to do is 'head' or 'more' the partial dump to see what is making it so big--e.g. that I am dumping the wrong cluster/database/schema. I wouldn't want the software to hide the evidence.