Re: Re: pg v. 8.4.5 misses objects and data after restoring from backup using wal

Scott Ribe <scott_ribe@elevated-dev.com> writes:
> On Jan 3, 2011, at 11:22 AM, Imre Oolberg wrote:
>> But http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/continuous-archiving.html suggests to use tar on rsync and i
guessthat PostgreSQL recovery with wal files takes care of these inconsistencies that are created during copying
filesystem,right? 

> Yes, but the database is recovered to the consistent state as of the pg_start_backup command, as I pointed out to you
before.Results of transactions that commit after the pg_start_backup command will not be in the backed up database. 

That's either incorrect or poorly worded.  The only way to get a
consistent, usable database is to replay all the WAL that was generated
between pg_start_backup and pg_stop_backup.  That will fix up whatever
inconsistencies exist in the base backup fileset.  Once you've done
that, you do have the results of transactions that committed after
pg_start_backup (and up to pg_stop_backup).  If you haven't done that,
what you have is an inconsistent pile of rather arbitrary bits.  The
base backup by itself (without the concurrently-created WAL) is
*useless*.

            regards, tom lane