Re: Missing important information in backup.sgml

Am 23.11.2016 um 21:41 schrieb Stephen Frost:
> Greetings,

Greetings, and excuse my persistence on this ;-),

> * Gunnar "Nick" Bluth (gunnar.bluth@pro-open.de) wrote:
>> Now, what could happen is

-- discussion of different disaster scenarios, boiling down to a
differing definition of the term "data loss"... I myself took a slightly
more generous approach, based on the idea that after an outage of the
archiving destination, a DBA would probably initiate a full backup
straight away (and/or try a restore).
-- However, to get this on track again...:

> One of the very important things that should be done as part of a backup
> is to ensure that all of the archive files required to restore the
> database to a consistent state are safely stored in the archive.  If
> that isn't done then it's possible that an incomplete archive may also
> render backups invalid.

Well, the need to have a complete archive is described in the docs
already. Maybe the potential consequences of an incomplete archive
should be pointed or more drastically...?

>> Am I missing something?
>
> For my 2c, at least, the archive should be viewed with nearly the same
> care and consideration as the primary data.  As with your database, you
> really want your backups to work when you need them.

We're certainly on the same page!


Now, the main purpose of my patch was to document a behaviour that many
of us have run into, namely that FATAL error showing up in the log when
the archive_command exits with RC > 127. It's a nuisance only, but it
does send people on false tracks and should at least be mentioned in the
documentation.
And since a couple of people does use rsync (or some wrappers around it)
for archiving, and that is notoriously giving RCs > 127, it seems legit
to at least mention it, no?

What think you?
--
Gunnar "Nick" Bluth
RHCE/SCLA

Mobil +49 172 8853339
Email: gunnar.bluth@pro-open.de
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