vacuumdb [connection-option...] [option...] --all | -a
Description
vacuumdb is a utility for cleaning a
PostgreSQL database.
vacuumdb will also generate internal statistics
used by the PostgreSQL query optimizer.
vacuumdb is a wrapper around the SQL
command VACUUM.
There is no effective difference between vacuuming and analyzing
databases via this utility and via other methods for accessing the
server.
Options
vacuumdb accepts the following command-line arguments:
-a --all
Vacuum all databases.
[-d] dbname [--dbname=]dbname
Specifies the name of the database to be cleaned or analyzed.
If this is not specified and -a (or
--all) is not used, the database name is read
from the environment variable PGDATABASE. If
that is not set, the user name specified for the connection is
used.
-e --echo
Echo the commands that vacuumdb generates
and sends to the server.
Clean or analyze table only.
Column names can be specified only in conjunction with
the --analyze or --analyze-only options.
Tip: If you specify columns, you probably have to escape the parentheses
from the shell. (See examples below.)
-v --verbose
Print detailed information during processing.
-V --version
Print the vacuumdb version and exit.
-z --analyze
Also calculate statistics for use by the optimizer.
-Z --analyze-only
Only calculate statistics for use by the optimizer (no vacuum).
-? --help
Show help about vacuumdb command line
arguments, and exit.
vacuumdb also accepts
the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:
-h host --host=host
Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server
is running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used
as the directory for the Unix domain socket.
-p port --port=port
Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file
extension on which the server
is listening for connections.
-U username --username=username
User name to connect as.
-w --no-password
Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires
password authentication and a password is not available by
other means such as a .pgpass file, the
connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in
batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a
password.
-W --password
Force vacuumdb to prompt for a
password before connecting to a database.
This option is never essential, since
vacuumdb will automatically prompt
for a password if the server demands password authentication.
However, vacuumdb will waste a
connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password.
In some cases it is worth typing -W to avoid the extra
connection attempt.
--maintenance-db=dbname
Specifies the name of the database to connect to discover what other
databases should be vacuumed. If not specified, the
postgres database will be used,
and if that does not exist, template1 will be used.
Environment
PGDATABASE PGHOST PGPORT PGUSER
Default connection parameters
This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities,
also uses the environment variables supported by libpq
(see Section 31.14).
Diagnostics
In case of difficulty, see VACUUM
and psql for
discussions of potential problems and error messages.
The database server must be running at the
targeted host. Also, any default connection settings and environment
variables used by the libpq front-end
library will apply.
Notes
vacuumdb might need to connect several
times to the PostgreSQL server, asking
for a password each time. It is convenient to have a
~/.pgpass file in such cases. See Section 31.15 for more information.
Examples
To clean the database test:
$ vacuumdb test
To clean and analyze for the optimizer a database named
bigdb:
$ vacuumdb --analyze bigdb
To clean a single table
foo in a database named
xyzzy, and analyze a single column
bar of the table for the optimizer: