Re: Cold backup with rsync -- WAL files?

On 12/06/13 13:19, Denish Patel wrote:
> Payal is right. You don't need WAL for Cold backup.

I'm afraid you do.

I just did a test to confirm with 9.2.6:

pg_ctl -D . -m fast stop
rsync . ../data-test -avP
cd ../data-test/pg_xlog
rm -f *
cd ..
pg_ctl -D . start

LOG:  could not open file "pg_xlog/00000001000000020000009B" (log file 2,
segment 155): No such file or directory
LOG:  invalid primary checkpoint record
LOG:  could not open file "pg_xlog/00000001000000020000009B" (log file 2,
segment 155): No such file or directory
LOG:  invalid secondary checkpoint record
PANIC:  could not locate a valid checkpoint record
LOG:  startup process (PID 13141) was terminated by signal 6: Aborted
LOG:  aborting startup due to startup process failure

Then, if I copy the WAL files back from the old stopped data dir:

rsync . ../data/pg_xlog/ pg_xlog/ -avP
pg_ctl -D . start

LOG:  database system was shut down at 2013-12-06 13:25:13 PST
LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections
LOG:  autovacuum launcher started

then it happily starts up.