NAME

       vacuumdb - garbage-collect and analyze a PostgreSQL database

SYNOPSIS

       vacuumdb [connection-option...] [option...] [ --table | -t table [( column [,...] )] ]...
                [dbname]

       vacuumdb [connection-option...] [option...] --all | -a

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 wrapper around the SQL command VACUUM(7). There is no effective difference
       between vacuuming and analyzing databases via this utility and via other methods for
       accessing the server.

OPTIONS

       vacuumdb accepts the following command-line arguments:

       -a, --all
           Vacuum all databases.

       [-d] dbname, [--dbname=]dbname
           Specifies the name of the database to be cleaned or analyzed. If this is not specified
           and -a (or --all) is not used, the database name is read from the environment variable
           PGDATABASE. If that is not set, the user name specified for the connection is used.

       -e, --echo
           Echo the commands that vacuumdb generates and sends to the server.

       -f, --full
           Perform “full” vacuuming.

       -F, --freeze
           Aggressively “freeze” tuples.

       -q, --quiet
           Do not display progress messages.

       -t table [ (column [,...]) ], --table=table [ (column [,...]) ]
           Clean or analyze table only. Column names can be specified only in conjunction with
           the --analyze or --analyze-only options. Multiple tables can be vacuumed by writing
           multiple -t switches.

               Tip
               If you specify columns, you probably have to escape the parentheses from the
               shell. (See examples below.)

       -v, --verbose
           Print detailed information during processing.

       -V, --version
           Print the vacuumdb version and exit.

       -z, --analyze
           Also calculate statistics for use by the optimizer.

       -Z, --analyze-only
           Only calculate statistics for use by the optimizer (no vacuum).

       -?, --help
           Show help about vacuumdb command line arguments, and exit.

       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 the value
           begins with a slash, it is used as the directory for the Unix domain socket.

       -p port, --port=port
           Specifies the TCP 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, --no-password
           Never issue a password prompt. If the server requires password authentication and a
           password is not available by other means such as a .pgpass file, the connection
           attempt will fail. This option can be useful in batch jobs and scripts where no user
           is present to enter a password.

       -W, --password
           Force vacuumdb to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.

           This option is never essential, since vacuumdb will automatically prompt for a
           password if the server demands password authentication. However, vacuumdb will waste a
           connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password. In some cases it is
           worth typing -W to avoid the extra connection attempt.

       --maintenance-db=dbname
           Specifies the name of the database to connect to discover what other databases should
           be vacuumed. If not specified, the postgres database will be used, and if that does
           not exist, template1 will be used.

ENVIRONMENT

       PGDATABASE, PGHOST, PGPORT, PGUSER
           Default connection parameters

       This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also uses the environment variables
       supported by libpq (see Section 31.14, “Environment Variables”, in the documentation).

DIAGNOSTICS

       In case of difficulty, see VACUUM(7) and psql(1) for discussions of potential problems and
       error messages. The database server must be running at the targeted host. Also, any
       default connection settings and environment variables used by the libpq front-end library
       will apply.

NOTES

       vacuumdb might need to connect several times to the PostgreSQL server, asking for a
       password each time. It is convenient to have a ~/.pgpass file in such cases. See Section
       31.15, “The Password File”, in the documentation for more information.

EXAMPLES

       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

SEE ALSO

       VACUUM(7)