Having a backup is pointless unless you have tried to actually replay it. Fortunately, it is easy to do. If you have created a plain text backup, you can simply take the SQL file and execute it:
psql your_db < your_file.sql A plain text backup is simply a text file containing everything. You can always simply replay a text file.
If you have decided on a custom format or directory format, you can use pg_restore to replay the backup. pg_restore allows you to do all kinds of fancy things such as replaying just part of a database and so on. In most cases, however, you will simply replay the entire database. In my example, I will create an empty database and just replay a custom format dump:
[hs@linuxpc backup]$ createdb new_db ...
