I'm trying to set up an automatic backup mechanism and have a number
of questions about issues I've encountered.
First of all, I tried to install pgAgent (the server is running win2k3
and pgsql 8.1.5). Trying to start the pgagent service results in an
"error 193", one google knows very little about. Upon inspection, I
found out that Windows has more to say about the problem: "pgAgent is
not a valid Win32 application". Hmm.
At this point, I decided to try a much more primitive approach: using
a windows scheduled task running a .bat or .cmd script which in turn
calls pg_dump. Don't really know why, but the scheduled task can't be
executed successfully (not even when all the script contains is a
simple print statement). This is obviously not a postgresql issue, but
it is one of the solutions I've tried.
Finally, I tried it on my linux laptop (pgsql 8.1.5): I created a test
linux user, created a valid .pgpass file in his home dir with
-rw------- privileges and attempted to back up the database. Doesn't
work. The username and password are valid, but no dump file is
created. I found out that I explicitly have to tell pg_dump the user
name in the .pgpass file using the -U switch: then it works, but only
when called directly from the shell like so:
pg_dump -h localhost -U myuser mydatabase -f outputfile.backup
The same command executed from a beanshell script (I wanted to be
platform independent) does nothing.
Where I stand at the moment:
1.) obviously, the beanshell solution will do nothing for me until I
find out why I can't execute a windows scheduled task, but it might be
a fairly flexible workarround if corrected
2.) again, obviously, I'd much, much rather do the backup from
pgAgent, if anyone can tell me how I can get arround the error Windows
throws at me.
Any suggestions are much appreciated.
Cheers,
t.n.a.
