The following outlines how to access the badges production server and copy the production database to your local machine to use for development.

ssh to server:

ssh -p 1855 badgesapp.vmhost.psu.edu

The badges application code and db is run with the user badgesapp. Start a shell session using this account with:

sudo -u badgesapp bash

The badges production database is called badges_production which can be access via the psql command or dumped via pg_dump. Run the following to output the database in the pg binary database format.

pg_dump --host localhost --username badges --verbose --clean --no-owner --no-acl --format=c badges_production > /tmp/badges_production.dump

Note: the /tmp/badges_production.dump can be altered to whatever file name/location you want.

On your local machine

Now copy the the dump file to your local machine using scp:

scp -P 1855 badgesapp.vmhost.psu.edu:/tmp/badges_production.dump ~/Desktop/

Now we can create a psql database to hold this database and tell the Rails app to use the newly imported.

Run psql as your local user with the pql cli:

psql

At the psql cli enter:

CREATE DATABASE badges_production_july10;

feel free to rename badges_production_july10 to whatever appropriated

Quit psql by entering \q

At this point we can import the psql dump file into the new db via:

pg_restore -d badges_production_july10 ~/Desktop/badges_production.dump

there may be warnings here about badges role not existing, which are fine to ignore

The config/database.yml file has an option to override the development by setting an enviromental variable called BADGES_DEV_DB. To set open your local profile ~/.bash_profile and enter along with the other badges app configs:

export BADGES_DEV_DB='badges_production_july10'

Stop the rails development server, get the new enviroment config source ~/.bash_profile then restart the rails server.

Viola! You should now have a copy of the a production seeded database on your local machine.

P.S.: Please go back and delete the /tmp/badges_production.dump file on badgesapp.vmhost.psu.edu for good housekeeping sake.