Re: Trimming transaction logs after extended WAL archive failures

On Mar 25, 2014, at 3:52 PM, Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> wrote:

> On 03/25/2014 01:56 PM, Steven Schlansker wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I have a Postgres 9.3.3 database machine.  Due to some intelligent work on the part of someone who shall remain
nameless,the WAL archive command included a ‘> /dev/null 2>&1’ which masked archive failures until the disk entirely
filledwith 400GB of pg_xlog entries. 
>>
>> I have fixed the archive command and can see WAL segments being shipped off of the server, however the xlog remains
ata stable size and is not shrinking.  In fact, it’s still growing at a (much slower) rate. 
>
> So what is wal_keep_segments set at in postgresql.conf?
>

5000.  There are currently about 18000 WAL segments in pg_xlog.

>>
>> I’ve seen references to people just deleting “old” segment files or using pg_resetxlog to fix this situation,
howeverI already know that the response from the mailing list will be “that’s insane, don’t do that”. 
>>
>> So what is the correct solution to pursue here?  The steady state of the machine should have enough space, I just
needto reclaim some of it...  Thanks for any guidance! 
>>
>> Steven
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Adrian Klaver
> adrian.klaver@aklaver.com