Need to Extract PostgreSQL Schema for Clean Database

StrongBad

I'm not an expert on PostgreSQL but I need to do some trouble shooting with an instance of it and am stuck as to how to proceed. What I am trying to do is to take one existing database instance and create a clone of it that is empty that I can then do testing with. I want to avoid altering the original database for obvious reasons.

Here is what I have currently:

postgres=# \l
        List of databases
    Name    |  Owner   | Encoding 
------------+----------+----------
 portal_old | phppg    | LATIN9
 portaltest | phppg    | LATIN9
 postgres   | postgres | LATIN9
 template0  | postgres | LATIN9
 template1  | postgres | LATIN9
(5 rows)

The database that needs to be copied is portaltest. Unfortunately there is not enough space on the server to make a full copy of the database itself (legacy problems) which adds additional complications.

So I cannot take a full pg_dump of the database. If I try to use the -n flag of pg_dump to only get the schema it tells me that no schema can be found.

I am unclear how to pull out the framework of the database to make a copy given the scenario.

scottalanmiller

What is the error produced by the schema dump?

StrongBad

This is what I get...

postgres@~ 2$ pg_dump -p 5023 -n portaltest
pg_dump: specified schema "portaltest" does not exist

scottalanmiller

No idea on that.

MattSpeller

@StrongBad said in Need to Extract PostgreSQL Schema for Clean Database:

This is what I get...

postgres@~ 2$ pg_dump -p 5023 -n portaltest
pg_dump: specified schema "portaltest" does not exist

http://orig01.deviantart.net/eb26/f/2011/145/e/2/portal_2___error_by_half_dude-d3h8bys.jpg