Re: Apply WAL logs after database restore

Brad Littlejohn <blittlejohn@posportal.com> wrote:

> I performed a backup of the database, using pg_dump

> I have WAL-based log shipping enabled on that server.
>
> I just created a second database server that will be a recovery
> server, compiled and installed PostgreSQL onto it, and restored
> the full backup taken from the primary database onto it. Since
> this wasn't a base backup (using tar, cpio, etc.), how would I
> apply the WAL logs to this secondary server, to get it up to
> current?

That can't be done -- pg_dump uses COPY or INSERT statements
(depending on your pg_dump options) which are *row* based, while WAL
files are *page* based.  They are alternative techniques which can't
be mixed and matched.

> All of the documentation I've read so far uses a base backup. Is
> there any way to apply the logs generated since that backup
> created by pg_dump to get the secondary database up to current?

No, you can only apply WAL files to a file-based image of the source
database, not to a database created through other means which
happens to contain the same data.

-Kevin