Name
vacuumdb — garbage-collect and analyze a PostgreSQL database
Synopsis
vacuumdb [connection-option...] [[--full] | [-f]] [[--verbose] | [-v]] [[--analyze] | [-z]] [--table | -t table
[( column [,...] )]
] [dbname]
vacuumdb [connection-options...] [[--all] | [-a]] [[--full] | [-f]] [[--verbose] | [-v]] [[--analyze] | [-z]]
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 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.
-
-f
--full
Perform “full” vacuuming.
-
-q
--quiet
Do not display a response.
-
-t table [ (column [,...]) ]
--table table [ (column [,...]) ]
-
Clean or analyze table only.
Column names may be specified only in conjunction with
the --analyze option.
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.
-
-z
--analyze
Calculate statistics for use by the optimizer.
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
--password
Force password prompt.
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 29.12, “Environment Variables”).
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 29.13, “The Password File” 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:
$ vacuumdb --analyze --verbose --table 'foo(bar)' xyzzy
