Re: Restoring pg_dump's made using COPY commands

Mike Miller wrote:
> Hi,
>   I'm trying to restore two dumps, one from 7.1.3 and the other from a 6.5.3
> series PgSQL server.  These dumps were both made using standard 'pg_dump >
> output' commands (specifying the host where needed on one of them).  When I
> run the database restore by doing execute-file in psql, piping the file to
> psql, or even attempting pg_restore (whcih doesn't work on these plain text
> databases), I receive messages pertaining to:
>   invalid command \N
>   invalid command \.
>   parse error at the end of line
>   <occasionally messages about missing fields>
>
> However this dump just came from a pg_dump, so it really should be working.
> I've tried every combination of pg_dump and psql versions from 7.4.1, 7.3.3,
> 7.1.3, 6.5.3 in order to get this to work right without any luck.
>
> Can anyone help me out with what is wrong?  I'm looking to make this a
> backup method, and if I can't restore the data, it doesn't do me much good
> (and I'm trying to restore some existing data).  Ultimately want to move
> them all up to 7.4.x
>
> Any ideas as to what causes these errors?  Anything I can do to fix the
> output of pg_dump?

Strange.  We used \N for NULLs way back in 6.5 and earlier.  I wonder if
you have carriage returns in the file accidentally.   Any way to see the
lines that are failing?

--
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  pgman@candle.pha.pa.us               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073