pg_restore: error: options -d/--dbname and -f/--file cannot be used together

Question

I'm somewhat new to postgres and having trouble with restoring a local database with backup data using pg_restore and hoping to get some help. My situation is as follows:

• I have postgres running on Docker and I can access pgadmin.
• I have created a new server in pgadmin called 'flocal' with host name postgres_db user name postgres and port 5432 .
• In this new server, I have created a new database called fdb
• I have a backup folder called fprod on my local PC (mac if it matters) that contains a bunch of .dat.gz files inside.

Now I navigate to this backup folder and in my local terminal I run this:

pg_restore -h postgres_db -p 5432 -U postgres -d fdb -f fprod

And I get the following error message below. I've tried changing my hostname to just -h localhost but no difference.

pg_restore: error: options -d/--dbname and -f/--file cannot be used together

What am I missing and doing wrong? Please advise.

Answer 1

As documented in the manual -f does not specify the input file, it specifies an output file eg for the --list command.

So you need:

pg_restore -h postgres_db -p 5432 -U postgres -d fdb fprod

Answer 2

pg_restore can restore to either a database( -d ) or a file( -f ).

If you restore to a file the minimum you need to do is:

pg_restore -f some_file.sql the_dump_file.out

This creates a plain text version of a custom format dump file.

If you dump to a database then the minimum is:

pg_restore -h some_host -d the_database -U a_user the_dump_file.out

You need to include the host( -h )/database( -d )/user( -U ) combination so pg_restore knows how to connect to the appropriate database. Host is the address(socket/IP) that the server is listening on. That is why you needed to change to -h localhost .