Re: 'Hot' backup of PostgreSQL dbases

Mark wrote:
> I've been using "pg_dumpall -c -o" for a while, but I realize that this is
> no good. After all, for a restore, the PostgreSQL server needs to be up!
> And what happens if the dbases crash/become corrupted (say, after a
> power-outage), and PostgreSQL won't start up any more? In MySQL, this was
> easy. In a Perl script I did something like: "FLUSH TABLES WITH READ
> LOCK", and then I proceeded to tar the entire dbases directory (so I could
> untar, without the MySQL server needing to be up).

You can always delete the DB cluster, initialize it, start Postgres and
then restore it from the dump.

See also:

   http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/backup.html

for other possibilities of backing up including file system backup.



Regards,
Ognjen