pg_dump: too many command line arguments

Question

what is wrong with this command:

pg_dump -U postgres -W admin --disable-triggers -a -t employees -f D:\ddd.txt postgres

This is giving error of too many command-line arguments

score 48 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 08 '12 at 13:41

48

Looks like its the -W option. There is no value to go with that option.

-W, --password           force password prompt (should happen automatically)

If you want to run the command without typing is a password, use a .pgpass file. http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/libpq-pgpass.html

answered Aug 08 '12 at 13:41

Jim

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@BhargavGor: omit `-W admin`, not just `-W` – Daniel Vérité Aug 09 '12 at 22:05

score 26 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 09 '14 at 17:08

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For posterity, note that pg_dump and pg_restore (and many other commands) cannot process long hyphens that word processors create. If you are cut-pasting command lines from a word processor, be sure it hasn't converted your hyphens to something else in editing. Else you will get command lines that look correct but hopelessly confuse the argument parsers in these tools.

answered Jan 09 '14 at 17:08

johnkaplantech

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This helped me. – VSO Jan 06 '20 at 17:02

Mustafa Kemal · Answer 3 · 2021-01-19T23:22:35.537

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pg_dump and pg_restore need to ask password on commandline, if you put it command, they always give "too many command-line arguments" error. You can use below for setting related environment variable in commandline or batch file:

"SET PGPASSWORD=<password>"

so that you are not asked to enter password manually in your batch file. They use given environment variable.

edited Jan 19 '21 at 23:22

answered Apr 12 '17 at 07:22

Mustafa Kemal

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This was so tech. It saved me from writing from a terrible me expect/spawn bash script. Thank you. – i0x539 Nov 29 '17 at 21:51
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This should be the accepted answer. The other answers are simply solving typos. – Andrew Swan Jan 06 '21 at 05:20

score 10 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 19 '18 at 09:51

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Instead of passing password with -W flag start with setting temporary variable for postgres:

PGPASSWORD="mypass" pg_dump -U postgres--disable-triggers -a -t employees -f D:\ddd.txt postgres

answered Dec 19 '18 at 09:51

Bear

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This worked, but needed single quotation for "mypass". – Nirmal Seneviratne May 11 '22 at 13:25

score 5 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 11 '14 at 05:56

5

-W -> will prompt for a password to take full DB dump use some thing like

pg_dump -h 192.168.44.200 -p 5432 -U postgres -W -c -C -Fc -f C:\MMM\backup10_3.backup DATABASE_NAME

edited Apr 11 '14 at 05:56

slavoo

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answered Apr 11 '14 at 04:22

Muthu

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score 5 · Answer 6 · answered May 23 '17 at 00:49

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I got this from copy-pasting, where 1 of the dashes were different.

Was: –-host= (first dash i a "long" dash) Corrected to --host= solved it

answered May 23 '17 at 00:49

Frederik Struck-Schøning

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dude, i'd fking kiss if you were here! lol. watch out for TextEdit auto-correct – mangonights Mar 21 '18 at 20:18
Stupid problems... I had -jobs instead of --jobs. – wmassingham May 28 '19 at 14:20

user14082 · Answer 7 · 2023-05-18T05:29:13.713

Additionally, if you don't want password prompt, use connection string directly.

pg_dump 'postgresql://<username>:<password>@localhost:5432/<dbname>'

So, combination with options in original question,

pg_dump 'postgresql://postgres:<password>@localhost:5432/postgres' --table='"employees"' --format='t' --file='D:\ddd.txt' --data-only --disable-triggers

Don't forget to use quotes when you have letter-casing issues

reference:

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 12 '19 at 11:10

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Another option is to add ~/.pgpass file with content like this:

hostname:port:database:username:password

pg_dump: too many command line arguments

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