Redo CREATE DATABASE

Started by COURTAULT Francois5 months ago5 messagesgeneral
Jump to latest
#1COURTAULT Francois
francois.courtault@thalesgroup.com

THALES GROUP LIMITED DISTRIBUTION to email recipients

Hello everyone,

I am looking to an old document where we (I was not there at that time) setup a database.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find the CREATE DATABASE instruction used. It is not in any of our docs ☹
At https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-createdatabase.html we can see that a lot of options are available.

Do you know if it is possible to retrieve the options we have set when we created the database ?

Best Regards.

#2Guillaume Lelarge
guillaume@lelarge.info
In reply to: COURTAULT Francois (#1)
Re: Redo CREATE DATABASE

Hi,

On 17/11/2025 10:59, COURTAULT Francois wrote:

THALES GROUP LIMITED DISTRIBUTION to email recipients

Hello everyone,

I am looking to an old document where we (I was not there at that time)
setup a database.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find the CREATE DATABASE instruction
used. It is not in any of our docs ☹

At https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-createdatabase.html <https://
www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-createdatabase.html> we can see that a
lot of options are available.

Do you know  if it is possible to retrieve the options we have set when
we created the database ?

You can't retrieve the old options if they have been changed later. You
can find the current ones with text tools like pg_restore, pg_dumpall,
or graphical tools (such as pgAdmin).

Regards.

--
Guillaume Lelarge
Consultant
https://dalibo.com

#3Greg Sabino Mullane
greg@turnstep.com
In reply to: Guillaume Lelarge (#2)
Re: Redo CREATE DATABASE

If you had log_statement set to something other than 'none', the create
database statement will appear in your database logs.

If you don't have it set, today would be a great day to set it to 'ddl'.

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/runtime-config-logging.html#RUNTIME-CONFIG-LOGGING-WHAT

Cheers,
Greg

--
Crunchy Data - https://www.crunchydata.com
Enterprise Postgres Software Products & Tech Support

#4Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com
In reply to: COURTAULT Francois (#1)
Re: Redo CREATE DATABASE

On 11/17/25 01:59, COURTAULT Francois wrote:

THALES GROUP LIMITED DISTRIBUTION to email recipients

Hello everyone,

I am looking to an old document where we (I was not there at that time)
setup a database.

Unfortunately, I was not able to find the CREATE DATABASE instruction
used. It is not in any of our docs ☹

At https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-createdatabase.html <https://
www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-createdatabase.html> we can see that a
lot of options are available.

Do you know  if it is possible to retrieve the options we have set when
we created the database ?

Assuming the database is still in the cluster.

In psql have you tried:

\l+ <the_db_name>

Also

select * from pg_database where datname = <the_db_name>

They may not give you everything, but it will be a start.

Best Regards.

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com

#5Laurenz Albe
laurenz.albe@cybertec.at
In reply to: COURTAULT Francois (#1)
Re: Redo CREATE DATABASE

On Mon, 2025-11-17 at 09:59 +0000, COURTAULT Francois wrote:

I am looking to an old document where we (I was not there at that time) setup a database.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find the CREATE DATABASE instruction used. It is not in any of our docs☹
At https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/sql-createdatabase.html we can see that a lot of options are available.
 
Do you know  if it is possible to retrieve the options we have set when we created the database ?

What I recommend is a schema-only dump with the --create option:

pg_dump --schema-only --create dbname

You will find CREATE DATABASE and perhaps ALTER DATABASE statements near the top that you
can use to create a copy of the database. There will also be GRANT statements for the
database.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe