Re: requests / suggestions to help with backups

> Lou Duchez wrote:
> >Like everyone else, I use pg_dump for backup purposes; I have a cron job
> >that runs a pg_dump whose output is then FTP'd elsewhere. Two things
> >that would make my life easier:
> >
> >1) "grant select on database ..." or, hypothetically, "grant select on
> >cluster". The goal would be to create a read-only PostgreSQL user, one
> >who can read the contents of an entire database (or even the entire
> >cluster) but make no changes. Currently, to do my cron job, I have to
> >specify a "trusted" user, otherwise PostgreSQL will ask for a password;
> >it sure would be nice if I could neuter my "trusted" user so he cannot
> >do any damage. (Yes, I could set read-only privileges on a table-by-table
> >basis. Obviously, that's a pain.)
> >
> >2) "pg_dumpall -E". If I could specify a single encoding for all my
> >database dumps, I could use pg_dumpall. But I cannot. (My databases
> >themselves are encoded as UTF-8, but the data in them is all LATIN1, and
> >I'd like to dump it all as LATIN1.) There are quite possibly good
> >reasons for not offering the "-E" option on pg_dumpall; in the wrong
> >hands it could be nightmarish. But sensibly employed, it could be very
> >useful.
> >
> >And, combining my two requests, a "grant select on cluster ..." would
> >allow me to do something like:
> >
> >pg_dumpall -U neutereduser -E LATIN1 -f onehugefile.bak
> >
> >I could really go for that. Especially when there's a major upgrade to
> >PostgreSQL.

> I guess you missed this:
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/interactive/sql-grant.html
> You want the third one down.

So are you recommending I use "grant create", "grant connect", "grant
temporary", "grant temp", or "grant all"? Those seem to be the only
permissions that can be applied on a database level. Certainly, I've
tried "grant select on database mydatabase to user myuser"; it doesn't
work, because "select" is not a database-level privilege. So unless
you know a database-level permission that means "read-only", I think
I'm still stuck.