NAME
vacuumdb - garbage-collect and analyze a PostgreSQL database
SYNOPSIS
vacuumdb [ connection-option... ] [ [ --full ] [ -f ] ] [ [
--verbose ] [ -v ] ] [ [ --analyze ] [ -z ] ] [ [ --freeze ] [
-F ] ] [ --table | -t table
[ ( column [,...] ) ]
] [ dbname ]
vacuumdb [ connection-options... ] [ [ --all ] [ -a ] ] [ [
--full ] [ -f ] ] [ [ --verbose ] [ -v ] ] [ [ --analyze ] [
-z ] ] [ [ --freeze ] [ -F ] ]
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 [vacuum(7)]. 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 progress messages.
-t table [ (column [,...]) ]
--table table [ (column [,...]) ]
Clean or analyze table only. Column names can 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.
-F
--freeze
Aggressively ‘‘freeze’’ tuples.
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.
ENVIRONMENT
PGDATABASE
PGHOST
PGPORT
PGUSER Default connection parameters
This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the
environment variables supported by libpq (see in the documentation).
DIAGNOSTICS
In case of difficulty, see VACUUM [vacuum(7)] and psql(1) 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 in the documentation 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
SEE ALSO
VACUUM [vacuum(7)]