Re: Add a different archive_command example for Linux / Unix

Hello Stephen,

For the missing fsync directory, in case of a system crash which I had in mind using this command,
I thought that fsck will fixed the discrepancy.

I support your proposal i.e. archive_command = 'backup_tool %p /mnt/server/archivedir/%f'
as at least people will investigate what choices they have for backup tools.

Regards
Gilles



----- Mail original -----
> De: "Stephen Frost" <sfrost@snowman.net>
> À: "gparc" <gparc@free.fr>
> Cc: "gparc" <gparc@online.fr>, "pgsql-docs" <pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org>
> Envoyé: Jeudi 8 Février 2024 22:54:29
> Objet: Re: Add a different archive_command example for Linux / Unix

> Greetings,
>
> * gparc@free.fr (gparc@free.fr) wrote:
>> Thanks Stephen for your detailed reply and broad perspective.
>> But I see the cp example command used **as is** most of the time.
>
> In those cases- how would changing it to be a dd command be helpful?
> The directory still wouldn't be fsync'd and there's a very good chance
> that the rest of the documentation isn't followed or understood either,
> leading almost certainly to broken backup setups.  This wouldn't be the
> only issue in any case, to be sure.
>
> This comes back to my earlier suggestion that perhaps we should just
> change it to something like:
>
> archive_command = 'backup_tool %p /mnt/server/archivedir/%f'
>
> and not talk about specific tools that exist but don't perform in the
> manner we actually expect from an archive command that we're using.  We
> already make it pretty clear to anyone who knows the tools mentioned
> that the 'example' command won't work, if you read everything under that
> section.
>
> Alternatively, we could actually document the tools we're aware of that
> do work and which do strive, at least, to try and be good backup tools
> and good archive commands for PG.  That would certainly be a service to
> our users and might result in far fewer misconfigured systems using the
> examples because they thought (despite the explicit note in our
> documentation) that they were recommendations.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Stephen