Re: Problem with PITR recovery

> I'd say it's very not cool :) It's not we all
> expected from PITR.
> I recall now Simon mentioned about that and have it
> in his TODO.
> Other thing I don't understand what's the problem to
> generate WAL file
> by demand ? Probably, TODO should says about this.

This would definetly be a good feature to have.  What
I would prefer is:

1) have the pitr stop command write out and close the
WAL that it is currently using.

2) have another stored proc which can be invoked at
any time that will write out and close the WAL that is
currently in use when that command is executed.

3) have a feature in postgres that will automatically
write out and close the WAL if the server hasn't had
any activity in XX minutes, or hasn't closed a WAL
file in XX minutes.

The reason for this is "the Friday night" scenario.

Let's say you have your WAL's FTP'd to a remote server
off-site.  Friday at 4:50 PM Postgres starts a new
WAL, and everyone goes home for the weekend at 5pm. 
No activity occurs on the database all weekend long,
so the new WAL never fills and is never closed.  If
something should happen during the weekend, and the
disks are ruined on the PG DB server, the last WAL is
never sent to the remote off-site server.  The last
transactions of the day are lost, even though they
could have taken place days ago.  With feature 3, you
can guarantee that the oldest WAL is XX minutes old,
so at least you have all the transactions within the
last XX minutes.

Of course feature #3 also needs to have some smarts to
it, so it doesn't create a bunch of completely empty
WAL's everytime the timer runs out.  It should only
write and close the WAL if there is actually some new
data in it.

Later
Rob


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