You can dump the whole PostgreSQL cluster with pg_dumpall. That's all the databases and all the globals for a single cluster. From the command line on the server, I'd do something like this. (Mine's listening on port 5433, not on the default port.) You may or may not need the --clean option.
$ pg_dumpall -U postgres -h localhost -p 5433 --clean --file=dump.sql
This includes the globals--information about users and groups, tablespaces, and so on.
If I were going to backup a single database and move it to a scratch server, I'd dump the database with pg_dump, and dump the globals with either
pg_dumpall --globals-only, orpg_dumpall --roles-only (if you only need roles)
like this.
$ pg_dump -U postgres -h localhost -p 5433 --clean --file=sandbox.sql sandbox
$ pg_dumpall -U postgres -h localhost -p 5433 --clean --globals-only --file=globals.sql
Outputs are just text files.
After you move these files to a different server, load the globals first, then the database dump.
$ psql -U postgres -h localhost -p 5433 < globals.sql
$ psql -U postgres -h localhost -p 5433 < sandbox.sql
I thought pg_dumpall would at least backup foreign keys, but even that
seems to be an 'option'. According to:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/app-pg-dumpall.html even
with pg_dumpall I need to use a -o option to backup foreign keys
No, that reference says "Use this option if your application references the OID columns in some way (e.g., in a foreign key constraint). Otherwise, this option should not be used." (Emphasis added.) I think it's unlikely that your application references the OID columns. You don't need to use this option to "backup foreign keys". (Read the dump file in your editor or file viewer.)
I guess it is too late now. If you use pg_resetxlog, you need to be extremely careful and, most importantly, know what you are doing.
Thanks to PostgreSQL's robustness, all you had to do in that case was to free space in the Barman server, for example by deleting the oldest backup in the catalogue. Then, once space was reclaimed, PostgreSQL could have resumed shipping WAL files and automatically recovered.
I know it is too late for you, but I am hoping that my reply will be able to help somebody in the future and prevent them from running pg_resetxlog.
Best Answer
With Barman, the only way to do it is to use
rsyncbackup method and to enable links. See example :If you need advanced configuration about incr and diff backups, maybe you should have a look at pgbackrest tool.