PostgreSQL 7.2 Documentation
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# vacuumdb

## Name

vacuumdb -- garbage-collect and analyze a PostgreSQL database

## Synopsis

vacuumdb [`connection-options`...] [[-d] `dbname`] [--full | -f] [--verbose | -v] [--analyze | -z] [--table '`table` [( `column` [,...] )]' ]
vacuumdb [`connection-options`...] [--all | -a] [--full | -f] [--verbose | -v] [--analyze | -z]

### Inputs

vacuumdb accepts the following command line arguments:

-d `dbname`
--dbname `dbname`

  Specifies the name of the database to be cleaned or analyzed.

-a
--all

  Vacuum all databases.

-f
--full

  Perform "full" vacuuming.

-v
--verbose

  Print detailed information during processing.

-z
--analyze

  Calculate statistics for use by the optimizer.

-t `table` [ (`column` [,...]) ]
--table `table` [ (`column` [,...]) ]

  Clean or analyze `table` only. Column names may be specified only in conjunction with the `--analyze` option.

  > Tip: If you specify columns to vacuum, you probably have to escape the parentheses from the shell.

vacuumdb also accepts the following command line arguments for connection parameters:

-h `host`
--host `host`

  Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is running. If host begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

-p `port`
--port `port`

  Specifies the Internet TCP/IP port or local Unix domain socket file extension on which the server is listening for connections.

-U `username`
--username `username`

  User name to connect as

-W
--password

  Force password prompt.

-e
--echo

  Echo the commands that vacuumdb generates and sends to the server.

-q
--quiet

  Do not display a response.

### Outputs

`VACUUM`

  Everything went well.

`vacuumdb: Vacuum failed.`

  Something went wrong. vacuumdb is only a wrapper script. See VACUUM and psql for a detailed discussion of error messages and potential problems.

## Description

vacuumdb is a utility for cleaning a PostgreSQL database. vacuumdb will also generate internal statistics used by the PostgreSQL query optimizer.

vacuumdb is a shell script wrapper around the backend command VACUUM via the PostgreSQL interactive terminal psql. There is no effective difference between vacuuming databases via this or other methods. psql must be found by the script and a database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any default settings and environment variables available to psql and the libpq front-end library do apply.

## Usage

To clean the database `test`:

    $ vacuumdb test

To clean and analyze for the optimizer a database named `bigdb`:

    $ vacuumdb --analyze bigdb

To clean a single table `foo` in a database named `xyzzy`, and analyze a single column `bar` of the table for the optimizer:

    $ vacuumdb --analyze --verbose --table 'foo(bar)' xyzzy

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