PostgreSQL: Importing dumps created with newer versions

When importing a dump created on a server that has a more recent pg_dump version you might get an error like

Copy
$ geordi dump staging -l
# Sourcing dump into the project_development db
pg_restore: [archiver] unsupported version (1.14) in file header
x An error occured loading staging.dump

On my machine I had psql version 10.14 which was the most recent package from the standard repository. The server, however, had pg_dump version 12.4.

The issue could be fixed by installing postgres 12 from the PostgreSQL APT-Repositories. Make sure to only install the client, e.g. sudo apt install postgresql-client-12. Otherwise another server instance will be installed in parallel.

Note:

• psql (client) and postgres server versions do not have to match in order for the import to work. The used server version was 9.5.

Check out our new e-book:

Growing Rails Applications in Practice

Learn to structure large Ruby on Rails codebases with the tools you already know and love.

Learn more