Thread: pg_dump usage of /tmp

Hi -
I have a question about how pg_dump uses /tmp. We are running postgres
8.2.4 on solaris 10. We have had some problems with our dump scripts
running out of memory on our cron server, and when we cleaned out some
junk files left over by non-postgres processes in /tmp, the dumps ran
fine.
Does pg_dump actually write temporary files to /tmp or is this just used
as swap space? If it does write files there, is there a way to have them
write to a different location?
Thanks is advance for the help!

"Lee, Mija" <mija@scharp.org> writes:
> Does pg_dump actually write temporary files to /tmp or is this just used
> as swap space? If it does write files there, is there a way to have them
> write to a different location?

AFAIR pg_dump only uses /tmp if you use -Ft (tar) output format.  Consider
switching to -Fc ... tar format doesn't really have any advantages for
most users.

            regards, tom lane