input file appears to be a text format dump. Please use psql

Question

From the pg_dump documentation:

Examples

To dump a database called mydb into a SQL-script file:

$ pg_dump mydb > db.sql

To reload such a script into a (freshly created) database named newdb:

$ psql -d newdb -f db.sql

To dump a database into a custom-format archive file:

$ pg_dump -Fc mydb > db.dump

To dump a database into a directory-format archive:

$ pg_dump -Fd mydb -f dumpdir

To reload an archive file into a (freshly created) database named newdb:

$ pg_restore -d newdb db.dump

From the pg_restore documentation:

Examples

Assume we have dumped a database called mydb into a custom-format dump file:

$ pg_dump -Fc mydb > db.dump

To drop the database and recreate it from the dump:

$ dropdb mydb
$ pg_restore -C -d postgres db.dump

The answer above didn't work for me, this worked:

psql db_development < postgres_db.dump

For me when i try to restore from remote host i used

psql -U username -p 5432 -h 10.10.10.1 -d database < db.dump

worked fine. And if not remote just following command worked.

psql -d database < db.dump

In order to create a backup using pg_dump that is compatible with pg_restore you must use the --format=custom / -Fc when creating your dump.

From the docs:

Output a custom-format archive suitable for input into pg_restore.

So your pg_dump command might look like:

pg_dump --file /tmp/db.dump --format=custom --host localhost --dbname my-source-database --username my-username --password

And your pg_restore command:

pg_restore --verbose --clean --no-acl --no-owner --host localhost --dbname my-destination-database /tmp/db.dump