pg_dump return status..

On Thu, 04 Jan 2001 05:12:25 Anand Raman wrote:

I am trying to create a shell script which dumps my db to a flat file ..

To dump the database i use the pg_dump command..

I find that irrespective of the fact whether pg_dump managed to connect
to the db or not the return status ($?) is always zero.. This throws the
shell script in a spin which continues even when pg_dump is not able to
connect ..

Is there anyway around this. I thought of one way was to check stderr
for the occurence of the word "failed" and then exit..

You could have the script check for the existence of the dump file and that
it has a non-zero size. To dump my personal database, I could use this:

#!/bin/bash
dumpfile=$HOME/mydatabase.dump
pg_dump -d $LOGNAME > $dumpfile
if [ -s $dumpfile ] ; then
echo 'Dump succeeded'
else
echo 'Dump failed'
fi

This should work in sh also.

Tony
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