Using PGD CLI#

What is the PGD CLI?#

The PGD CLI is a convenient way to connect to and manage your PGD cluster. To use it, you need a user with PGD superuser privileges or equivalent. The PGD user with superuser privileges is the bdr_superuser role and replication . An example of an equivalent user is edb_admin on an EDB Cloud Service distributed high-availability cluster.

Adding an entry to your

.pgpass , which includes the host, port,: database name, user name, and password.

Setting the password in the PGPASSWORD environment variable.
Including the password in the connection string.

We recommend the first option, as the other options don’t scale well with multiple databases, or they compromise password confidentiality.

Once you have installed pgd-cli , run the pgd command to access the PGD command line interface. The pgd command needs details about the host, port, and database to connect to, along with your username and password.

From PGD 6.5, if the PGD CLI connects to a regular Postgres database that doesn’t have the BDR extension installed, it displays a clear warning instead of failing with an ambiguous connection error.

Passing a database connection string#

Use the --dsn flag to pass a database connection string to the pgd command. When you pass the connection string with the --dsn flag, you don’t need a configuration file. The flag takes precedence even if a configuration file is present. For example:

pgd nodes list --dsn "host=bdr-a1 port=5432 dbname=pgddb user=enterprisedb"

The database conmnection string (DSN) can also be set using the PGD_CLI_DSN environment variable. For example:

export PGD_CLI_DSN="host=bdr-a1 port=5432 dbname=pgddb user=enterprisedb"
pgd nodes list

The --dsn flag takes precedence over the environment variable, so if both are set, the --dsn value is used.

See PGD CLI Command reference for a description of the command options.

Specifying a configuration file#

If a pgd-cli-config.yml file is in /etc/edb/pgd-cli or $HOME/.edb/pgd-cli , pgd uses it. You can override this behavior using the optional -f or --config-file flag. For example:

pgd nodes list -f /opt/my-config.yml
__OUTPUT__
Node Name Group Name   Node Kind Join State Node Status
- -------- ------------ --------- ---------- -----------
kaftan    dc1_subgroup data      ACTIVE     Up
kaolin    dc1_subgroup data      ACTIVE     Up
kaboom    dc1_subgroup data      ACTIVE     Up

Specifying the output format#

Use the -o or --output flag to change the default output format to JSON. For example:

pgd nodes list -o json
[
  {
    "node_name": "kaftan",
    "node_group_name": "dc1_subgroup",
    "node_kind_name": "data",
    "join_state": "ACTIVE",
    "node_status": "Up",
    "node_id": 3490219809,
    "node_seq_id": 2,
    "node_local_dbname": "pgddb"
  },
  {
    "node_name": "kaolin",
    "node_group_name": "dc1_subgroup",
    "node_kind_name": "data",
    "join_state": "ACTIVE",
    "node_status": "Up",
    "node_id": 2111777360,
    "node_seq_id": 1,
    "node_local_dbname": "pgddb"
  },
  {
    "node_name": "kaboom",
    "node_group_name": "dc1_subgroup",
    "node_kind_name": "data",
    "join_state": "ACTIVE",
    "node_status": "Up",
    "node_id": 2710197610,
    "node_seq_id": 3,
    "node_local_dbname": "pgddb"
  }
]

The PGD CLI supports the following output formats.

Setting	Format	Description
simple	Tabular	A simple tabular view. (Default).
json	JSON	Presents the raw data with no formatting. For some commands, the JSON output might show more data than the tabular output, such as extra fields and more detailed messages.
psql	PSQL	A tabular view in the style of PSQL output. format.
modern	Tabular	A tabular view which uses box characters to deliniate the table.
markdown	Markdown	A Markdown style output which may product long-form, non-tabular output for some commands such as pgd assess.

Accessing the command line help#

To list the supported commands, enter:

pgd --help

For help with a specific command and its parameters, enter pgd <command_name> --help . For example:

pgd nodes list --help

Using PGD CLI

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