Copying a postgres database from one server to another

If you want to take a database mydb on server and copy it to mydb on server2, completely replacing all contents of mydb on server2, dump with something like:

pg_dump -Fc -f mydb.dump -h server1 mydb

then restore with:

dropdb -h server2 mydb
createdb -h server2 -T template0 mydb
pg_restore -d mydb -h server2 mydb.dump

This will:

• DROP database mydb on server2, completely and permanently destroying all data in mydb on server2
• Re-CREATE database mydb on server2 from a totally empty template
• Restore the copy of mydb on server into server2

Another option is to use pg_restore --clean without the drop and create. That'll drop all tables then re-create them. I prefer to drop the whole DB and get a clean one instead.