Command Reference

Complete reference for all PDU commands including data export, recovery operations, and dropped table scanning.

Parameter Reference

Configuration file settings and runtime parameters for WAL scanning, recovery modes, and disk scanning.

File Identification and Page Images

Identify Unknown Data Files

Use Probe and ProbeBatch to identify candidate table definitions, then export with confirmed mappings.

Recover Data from a Page Image

Use PDUPlan and RecoverISO to recover data from a PDU page image.

Recover Data from Disk Fragments

Preserve surviving pages and distinguish file identification, image recovery, historical layouts and attribution evidence.

System Requirements

Supported Platforms

EL 7 / 8 / 9
Ubuntu Linux
Debian Linux
ARM64 Linux
x86_64 Linux

PostgreSQL Versions

PostgreSQL 10 - 18
Version-specific executables
pdu10, pdu11, ... pdu18

Quick Start

Extract PDU Package

Unzip the PDU package to your preferred directory.

unzip PDU3.0_for_Postgresql10-18.zip

Configure pdu.ini

Set PGDATA and the WAL source path in ARCHIVE_DEST. The WAL source may be an archive directory or a checked copy of PGDATA/pg_wal.

vim pdu.ini

Select Version and Launch

Choose the executable matching your PostgreSQL version.

./pdu14 # For PostgreSQL 14

Initialize Database Metadata

Run the bootstrap command to load database structure.

b;

Exported Data Structure

pdu/
├── database_name/
│   ├── schema_name/
│   │   ├── table1.csv0         # Table data CSV files
│   │   ├── table2.csv0
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── DDL/
│   │   └── schema_name_ddl.sql # CREATE TABLE statements
│   └── COPY/
│       └── schema_name_copy.sql # COPY import statements
└── restore/
    ├── datafile/               # Manually added data files
    ├── dropscan/               # Dropped table recovery results
    ├── meta/                   # Metadata files
    └── tab.config              # dropscan table config

Usage Guide