Re: replay WAL segments without a "base backup" ?

Kevin Kempter <kevink@consistentstate.com> writes:
> due to operator error at one of my client sites we're trying to restore a
> deleted db.

> We did a restore with a pgdump that went fine but the dump is 3weeks old. they
> do have WAL segments and they claim that the WAL segments are exactly in line
> with the needed transactions - from a timing perspective.  However no base
> backup with pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() was ever run.

> Is there any way to trick postgres into thinking that it needs to play fwd
> these WAL's?  Would it work to simply place them in a dir, create a
> recovery.conf file pointing to that dir and restart the cluster?

No, there is exactly 0 hope here.  You would need a filesystem-level
backup to work from.  A restore from a pg_dump is not going to reproduce
any of the low-level details (such as OID assignments or tuple
placement) that WAL replay needs to have match.

            regards, tom lane