Moving postgresql data to different drive

Question

I am using AWS as my cloud environment. I installed PostgreSQL on the same drive as my root instance volume. I have attached and mounted the second drive to my instance. Now I want to move all my PostgreSQL data to the different drive. I am still in development mode so I can delete the old data if it makes transfer easier at this point of time. What is the best way to do this?

Is PostgreSQL tablespace something which I should look at?

Answer 1

The following should do it:

1. Shut down PostgreSQL
2. Make sure PostgreSQL does not run any longer
3. Check that PostgreSQL is really stopped
4. Copy the old data directory to the new drive
   The data directory is usually defined through a commandline parameter (-D) for your service or through the PGDATA environment variable.
5. Update your PostgreSQL configuration (service, environment var) to point to the new data directory. In Windows you can use the sc utility or pg_ctl (from the Postgres binaries)
6. If you copied the data, rename the old data directory to make sure PostgreSQL cannot find it any longer. That way you'll get an error message if you didn't get the configuration right.
7. Start the service
8. If everything is running fine, you can delete the old directory.

Answer 2

1. Stop postgresql service
2. cp -a source_data_directory destination_data_directory
3. chown -R postgres_user /destination_data_directory
4. export PGDATA=destination_data_directory
5. Changing data directory to destination_data_directory within postgresql.conf
6. pg_ctl start

Answer 3

Here is a description of how to move an existing PostgreSQL database to a new location (folder, partition), on Arch Linux (this procedure should be similar for other Linux distributions).

pg_dumpall is a utility for writing out (dumping) all PostgreSQL databases of a cluster into one script file. ... It does this by calling pg_dump for each database in the cluster. ...

For example:

## To dump all databases:
$ pg_dumpall > /tmp/db.out               ## backup all postgres databases to file
$ pg_dumpall -Fc dbname > /tmp/outfile   ## backup a database

## To reload database(s) from that file:
$ psql -f /tmp/db.out postgres

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TL/DR

You need to:

• export (pg_dumpall) database
• create new EMPTY directory
• edit postgresql.conf file
• restart postgres server service
• load old data from dump file into new database

Summary of commands

I'm leaving my shell prompts (hostname ...) to clarify what shell I am in as I proceed.

[victoria@victoria ~]$ postgres --version     ## postgres (PostgreSQL) 11.2
[victoria@victoria claws]$ sudo -u postgres -i
[postgres@victoria ~]$ pg_dumpall > /tmp/db.out
[postgres@victoria ~]$ psql
[postgres]# SHOW data_directory;              ## /var/lib/postgres/data
[postgres]# exit
[victoria@victoria postgres]$ mkdir /mnt/Vancouver/programming/rdb/postgres/postgresdb
## IMPORTANT: dir must be empty:
[victoria@victoria postgres]$ l postgresdb/   ## total 0
[victoria@victoria postgres]$ sudo chown postgres:root /mnt/Vancouver/programming/rdb/postgres/postgresdb/
[victoria@victoria postgres]$ sudo systemctl status postgresql
  ...
  May 02 19:55:21 victoria systemd[1]: Started PostgreSQL database server.
[postgres@victoria ~]$ initdb --locale en_US.UTF-8 -E UTF8 -D '/mnt/Vancouver/programming/rdb/postgres/postgresdb/data'
[postgres@victoria ~]$ exit
[victoria@victoria postgres]$ sudo vim /var/lib/postgres/data/postgresql.conf
  ## added line:
  data_directory = '/mnt/Vancouver/programming/rdb/postgres/postgresdb/data'
[victoria@victoria postgres]$ sudo -u postgres -i
[postgres@victoria ~]$ psql
[postgres]# SHOW data_directory;
  ## /var/lib/postgres/data   ## << Old dir; need to restart postgresql service
[postgres]# \q
[victoria@victoria postgres]$ sudo systemctl restart postgresql
[victoria@victoria postgres]$ sudo -u postgres -i
[postgres@victoria ~]$ psql
[postgres]# SHOW data_directory;
  ## /mnt/Vancouver/programming/rdb/postgres/postgresdb/data
[postgres]# \q
[postgres@victoria ~]$ psql -f /tmp/db.out postgres
  SET
  SET
  SET
  CREATE ROLE
  ALTER ROLE
  [ ... SNIP! ... ]
[postgres@victoria ~]$ exit
## Done!  :-D

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Example

See my accompanying blog post, How to Move an Existing PostgreSQL Database on Arch Linux, for commented code and output.---

---

References

• [good tips] How To Move a PostgreSQL Data Directory to a New Location on Ubuntu 16.04

• [postgres docs] pg_dumpall

• [Arch Linux docs] Manual Dump and Reload

• [StackOverflow] Copying PostgreSQL Database to Another Server
• [StackOverflow] PostgreSQL Dump Permission Denied

Answer 4

@a_horse_with_no_name answers works great but I needed to modified it bit so systemctl works with it.

sudo systemctl edit postgresql-13

# Note: This overrides base systemctl file
[Service]
Environment=
Environment=PGDATA=new_path

Note: I had to explicitly clear Environment before setting it again, as it is an additive setting, similar to other lists like ExecStart (as a whole, not per-variable) and EnvironmentFile;