Question

I am attempting to restart a postgresql db which has stopped/is down and requires a VACUUM.

http://suwala.eu/blog/2010/10/09/how-to-vacuum-postgresql/

Following the above sequence of commands, I can’t seem to get the last line to execute right.

$ postgres -D /var/lib/pgsql/data YOUR_DATABASE_NAME < /tmp/fix.sql  

This gives me an error that says

postgres: invalid argument: "YOUR_DATABASE_NAME"
Try "postgres --help" for more information.

Any idea why?

CLARIFICATION

The ‘YOUR_DATABASE_NAME’ and the data directory I used on my server are the correct ones.

Answer 1

This appears to be an issue in PostgreSQL, as according to documentation for 9.0 and 8.3 it should work with those versions but doesn’t.

However, using –single switch makes it work:

postgres --single -D [path-to-data-dir] [db-name] < /tmp/fix.sql