Re: starting postgres with an empty px_xlog folder

Mike Broers <mbroers@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ultimately the hosting service restored the files that they had
> not brought over during their maintenance migration and we started
> up ok.  So that was a relief.

+1

> We had archived log files but it did not appear that the archive
> destination was caught up with the xlog the cluster was
> complaining about.
>
> Given that the database server was shut down cleanly, and all
> other data besides pg_xlog was available as expected (not
> corrupted), what would have been the problem with pg_resetxlogs?

Frankly, the odds would have been pretty good that you would have
come up without lost data or a corrupted database; but it's a matter
of the degree of confidence in that.  Startup and shutdown code, by
its nature, is not exercised as heavily as most PostgreSQL code.
Startup after using a data recovery utility is even less heavily
exercised.  Less frequently executed code is more likely to have
subtle bugs which only show up in rare corner cases.  I like to
minimize my risk.

-Kevin