Ensure correct username when using pg_restore

Question

I have just installed postgres 9.1.6 on a local Ubuntu server. Now I'm trying to restore a database dump from a database on Heroku. The local database is setup like this:

sudo -u postgres psql -c "create user app_user with password 'pass';"
sudo -u postgres psql -c "create database app_production owner app_user;"

Now, when I try to restore the the dump I use the following command:

pg_restore --verbose --schema=public --no-acl --no-owner --jobs=8 --exit-on-error --username=app_user --dbname=app_production /tmp/app_production.dump

Now in psql with \l to see ownerships I get the following:

                                         List of databases
          Name    |   Owner   | Encoding |   Collate   |    Ctype    |   Access privileges  
------------------+-----------+----------+-------------+-------------+-----------------------
 app_production   | postgres  | UTF8     | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | 
 postgres         | postgres  | UTF8     | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | 
 template0        | postgres  | UTF8     | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | =c/postgres          +
                  |           |          |             |             | postgres=CTc/postgres
 template1        | postgres  | UTF8     | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | =c/postgres          +
                  |           |          |             |             | postgres=CTc/postgres

As you can see, the ownership of app_production database has now turned from app_user to postgres. I would have expected the owner of the app_production database to still be app_user, so what am I doing wrong?

BTW, The --schema=public was added, because I was getting a weird error:

"Could not execute query: ERROR: must be owner of extension plpgsql"

Another thing is, that the owner of the dump is the user that the database was having on heroku, which would be something like 'jebf473b73bv73v749b7'

Answer 1

If you want to create the plpgsql extension I believe you have to be Superuser. My recommendation is to make app_user temporarily a superuser and then revert this. Superusers also are treated as owners of everything.

ALTER USER app_user WITH SUPERUSER;

run the restore, then when you are done

ALTER USER app_user WITH NOSUPERUSER;

This should avoid any other permissions issues but still leave you with the permissions you want.