Re: Point in Time Recovery

Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> OK, but procedurally, how do you correlate the start/stop time of the
> tar backup with the WAL numeric file names?

Ideally the procedure for making a backup would go something like:

1. Inquire of the server its current time and the WAL position of the
most recent checkpoint record (which is what you really need).

2. Make the backup.

3. Inquire of the server its current time and the current end-of-WAL
position.

4. Record items 1 and 3 along with the backup itself.

I think the current theory was you could fake #1 by copying pg_control
before everything else, but this doesn't really help for step #3, so
it would probably be better to add some server functions to get this
info.
        regards, tom lane