Creating a copy of a database in Postgres

A command-line version of Bell's answer:

createdb -O ownername -T originaldb newdb

This should be run under the privileges of the database master, usually postgres.

Don't know about pgAdmin, but pgdump gives you a dump of the database in SQL. You only need to create a database by the same name and do 'psql mydatabase < mydump' to restore all of the tables and their data and all access privileges.

In pgAdmin you can make a backup from your original database, and then just create a new database and restore from the backup just created.

Regards

PostgreSQL 9.1.2:

$ CREATEDB new_db_name -T orig_db_name -O db_user;

For those still interested, I have come up with a bash script that does (more or less) what the author wanted. I had to make a daily business database copy on a production system, this script seems to do the trick. Remember to change the database name/user/pw values.

#!/bin/bash

if [ 1 -ne $# ]
then
  echo "Usage `basename $0` {tar.gz database file}"
  exit 65;
fi

if [ -f "$1" ]
then
  EXTRACTED=`tar -xzvf $1`
  echo "using database archive: $EXTRACTED";
else
  echo "file $1 does not exist"
  exit 1
fi


PGUSER=dbuser
PGPASSWORD=dbpw
export PGUSER PGPASSWORD

datestr=`date +%Y%m%d`


dbname="dbcpy_$datestr"
createdbcmd="CREATE DATABASE $dbname WITH OWNER = postgres ENCODING = 'UTF8' TABLESPACE = pg_default LC_COLLATE = 'en_US.UTF-8' LC_CTYPE = 'en_US.UTF-8' CONNECTION LIMIT = -1;"
dropdbcmp="DROP DATABASE $dbname"

echo "creating database $dbname"
psql -c "$createdbcmd"

rc=$?
if [[ $rc != 0 ]] ; then
  rm -rf "$EXTRACTED"
  echo "error occured while creating database $dbname ($rc)"
  exit $rc
fi


echo "loading data into database"
psql $dbname < $EXTRACTED > /dev/null

rc=$?

rm -rf "$EXTRACTED"

if [[ $rc != 0 ]] ; then
  psql -c "$dropdbcmd"
  echo "error occured while loading data to database $dbname ($rc)"
  exit $rc
fi


echo "finished OK"

What's the correct way to copy entire database (its structure and data) to a new one in pgAdmin?

Answer:

CREATE DATABASE newdb WITH TEMPLATE originaldb;

Tried and tested.

If the database has open connections, this script may help. I use this to create a test database from a backup of the live-production database every night. This assumes that you have an .SQL backup file from the production db (I do this within webmin).

#!/bin/sh

dbname="desired_db_name_of_test_enviroment"
username="user_name"
fname="/path to /ExistingBackupFileOfLive.sql"

dropdbcmp="DROP DATABASE $dbname"
createdbcmd="CREATE DATABASE $dbname WITH OWNER = $username "

export PGPASSWORD=MyPassword



echo "**********"
echo "** Dropping $dbname"
psql -d postgres -h localhost -U "$username" -c "$dropdbcmp"

echo "**********"
echo "** Creating database $dbname"
psql -d postgres -h localhost -U "$username" -c "$createdbcmd"

echo "**********"
echo "** Loading data into database"
psql -d postgres -h localhost -U "$username" -d "$dbname" -a -f "$fname"

Using pgAdmin, disconnect the database that you want to use as a template. Then you select it as the template to create the new database, this avoids getting the already in use error.