RSS feed
  • mongorestore: ERROR: root directory must be a dump of a single collection when specifying a collection name with –collection

    Posted on April 21st, 2010 2 comments

    mongorestore wants the specific collection's filename rather than the entire database's dump folder:

    dwiel@dwiel$ mongodump -d db -c variables -o ../backups/1
    connected to: 127.0.0.1
    DATABASE: db to ../backups/1/db
            db.variables to ../backups/1/db/variables.bson
                    3 objects

    dwiel@dwiel$ mongorestore -d db -c variables --drop ../backups/1
    ERROR: root directory must be a dump of a single collection
           when specifying a collection name with --collection
    usage: ........

    dwiel@dwiel$ mongorestore -d db -c variables --drop ../backups/1/db/variables.bson
    connected to: 127.0.0.1
    ../backups/1/db/variables.bson
            going into namespace [db.variables]
            dropping
            3 objects

    quite obvious in retrospect given the error message, but the internet didn't know the answer yet and there isn't much documentation about mongorestore.

2 Responses to “mongorestore: ERROR: root directory must be a dump of a single collection when specifying a collection name with –collection”

  1. Actually if you do:
    mongorestore -d db ../backups/1/db
    it will restore the whole db.

  2. Thanks for this, your example worked for me in restoring a single collection from a dump.

    mongorestore -c users –drop -d my-database ./my-database/users.bson

    osh

Leave a Reply