vacuumdb [connection-options...] [--full | -f]
[--verbose | -v] [--analyze | -z] [--table | -t 'table [( column [,...] )]' ] [dbname]
vacuumdb [connection-options...] [--all | -a] [--full
| -f] [--verbose | -v] [--analyze | -z]
vacuumdb is a utility for cleaning a PostgreSQL database. vacuumdb will also generate internal statistics used by the PostgreSQL query optimizer.
vacuumdb is a shell script wrapper around the backend command VACUUM via the PostgreSQL interactive terminal psql. There is no effective difference between vacuuming databases via this or other methods. psql must be found by the script and a database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default settings and environment variables available to psql and the libpq front-end library do apply.
vacuumdb might need to connect several times to the PostgreSQL server, asking for a password each time. It is convenient to have a $HOME/.pgpass file in such cases.
vacuumdb accepts the following command-line arguments:
[-d]
dbname[--dbname]
dbnameSpecifies the name of the database to be cleaned or
analyzed. If this is not specified and -a (or --all)
is not used, the database name is read from the environment
variable PGDATABASE. If that is not
set, the user name specified for the connection is
used.
-a--allVacuum all databases.
-e--echoEcho the commands that vacuumdb generates and sends to the server.
-f--fullPerform "full" vacuuming.
-q--quietDo not display a response.
-t table [ (column [,...]) ]--table table [ (column [,...]) ]Clean or analyze table
only. Column names may be specified only in conjunction
with the --analyze option.
Tip: If you specify columns to vacuum, you probably have to escape the parentheses from the shell.
-v--verbosePrint detailed information during processing.
-z--analyzeCalculate statistics for use by the optimizer.
vacuumdb also accepts the following command-line arguments for connection parameters:
-h host--host hostSpecifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If host begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.
-p port--port portSpecifies the Internet TCP/IP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.
-U username--username usernameUser name to connect as
-W--passwordForce password prompt.
To clean the database test:
$ vacuumdb test
To clean and analyze for the optimizer a database named bigdb:
$ vacuumdb --analyze bigdb
To clean a single table foo in a database named xyzzy, and analyze a single column bar of the table for the optimizer:
$ vacuumdb --analyze --verbose --table 'foo(bar)' xyzzy