pg_filedump
pg_filedump — display formatted contents of a Postgres Pro heap, index, or control file
Synopsis
pg_filedump
[option
...] [file
]
Description
pg_filedump is a utility to format Postgres Pro heap/index/control files into a human-readable form. You can format/dump the files several ways, as listed in the Options section, as well as dump a straight binary. The type of file (heap/index) can usually be determined automatically by the content of the blocks within the file. However, to format a pg_control
file you must use the -c
option. The default is to format the entire file using the block size listed in block 0 and display block relative addresses. These defaults can be modified using run-time options. Some options may seem strange but they are there for a reason. For example, block size. It is there because if the header of block 0 is corrupt, you need a method of forcing a block size.
Installation
pg_filedump is provided with Postgres Pro Standard as a separate pre-built package pg-filedump-std-14
(for the detailed installation instructions, see Chapter 16).
Options
Defaults are: relative addressing, range of the entire file, block size as listed on block 0 in the file.
The following options are valid for heap and index files:
-a
Display absolute addresses when formatting. Block header information is always block-relative.
-b
Display binary block images within a range. The option will turn off all formatting options.
-d
Display formatted block content dump. The option will turn off all other formatting options.
-D
attrlist
Decode tuples using given comma-separated list of types. The list of supported types:
bigint
bigserial
bool
char
charN
— char(n)date
float
float4
float8
int
json
macaddr
name
numeric
oid
real
serial
smallint
smallserial
text
time
timestamp
timetz
uuid
varchar
varcharN
— varchar(n)xid
xml
~
— ignore all attributes left in a tuple-f
Display formatted block content dump along with interpretation.
-h
Display help.
-i
Display interpreted item details.
-k
Verify block checksums.
-o
Do not dump old values.
-R
startblock
[endblock
]Display specific block ranges within the file. Blocks are indexed from 0.
startblock
: block to start at.endblock
: block to end at. Astartblock
without anendblock
will format a single block.-s
segsize
Force segment size to
segsize
.-t
Dump TOAST files.
-v
Output additional information about TOAST relations.
-n
segnumber
Force segment number to
segnumber
.-S
blocksize
Force block size to
blocksize
.-x
Force interpreted formatting of block items as index items.
-y
Force interpreted formatting of block items as heap items.
The following options are valid for control files:
-c
Interpret the file listed as a control file.
-f
Display formatted content dump along with interpretation.
-S
blocksize
Force block size to
blocksize
.
Additional parameters:
-m
Interpret file as
pg_filenode.map
file and print contents. All other options will be ignored.
In most cases, it is recommended to use the -i
and -f
options to get the most useful dump output.
Author
Patrick Macdonald <patrickm@redhat.com>