Re: pg_dump why no indicator of completion

Ron,
So what you are saying is that I have to write a shell script around
pg_dump to catch the exit code of pg_dump since the developers of pg_dump
didn't have pg_dump simply write an exit message?

Since multiple pg_dump commands are often run at the same command prompt,
and they can take hours, if not days to run, and there are a myriad of
other commands the will be run in the interim, any exit code generated by
pg_dump with be lost in the flotsam and jetsam of the multitude of exit
codes created by every other command run between the calling of pg_dump and
it's eventual termination. It could have completed successfully, crashed,
been killed, etc.

Or am I mistaken?

thanks,
rik.

On Sun, Apr 30, 2023 at 11:28 PM Ron <ronljohnsonjr(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On 4/30/23 19:18, richard coleman wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've been working with pg_dump and one thing that's always struck me as
> strange is that there never seems to be an indication in the log that the
> pg_dump process completed successfully.
>
> For example, I've been running a bunch of backups with pg_dump in
> directory mode with multiple jobs. When I come back several hours later
> there are no pg_dump processes running. The log is filled with:
>
> dumping contents of foo
> finished item 123456 of TABLE DATA bar
> etc.
>
>
> Other than trying to restore the multi terabyte database somewhere else is
> there any way to know that it actually finished successfully?
>
> Why doesn't pg_dump add a line in the output like:
>
> pg_backup finished
>
> when it's completed successfully?
>
> This seems like a terrible oversight.
>
> Am I missing something obvious?
>
>
> "They" expect you to do the Unix Thing and check $?. Thus, that's what I
> do; any non-zero value generates an email with a scary subject line, the
> specifics of which are based on the exact code value. I'm not near my work
> computer; otherwise I'd share them with you.
>
> --
> Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia.
>