Restore a PostgreSQL Database Backup

This is a quick example of how to restore a PostgreSQL database dump.

Step 1

Create a PostgreSQL backup for sampleDatabase  (as an example).

Step 2

Go to your backup page, under the "Backup History" section click the little "i" on the right, click "Database Backup", then click "Raw Download Link" and copy the output.

Step 3

On your server, run the following command, replace the raw download link you obtained in the previous step:

wget "PasteTheRawDownloadLinkHereBetweenTheQuotes" -O "postgresql-backup.sql.gz"

Step 4

Now that you downloaded the database backup on your server, extract it as shown:

tar -xvf postgresql-backup.sql.gz 

This will output a single SQL file in this format sampleDatabase.sql  in the same directory.

Step 5

Note: the following command will restore newDatabaseName content to sampleDatabase content. It is a good practice to inspect the backup first before the restore.

Restore the downloaded backup as shown below by running:

PGPASSWORD=database-password-here pg_restore -U database-user-here -h your-database-host-or-ip-here -p database-port-here -d newDatabaseName < sampleDatabase.sql

If you need any help in any of these steps, let us know and we can help you with the restore.