Re: warning message in standby

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 10:58 AM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> If someone is sloppy about how they copy the WAL files around,
>>> they could temporarily have a truncated file.
>>
>> Can you explain the scenario you're concerned about in more
>> detail?
>
> If someone uses cp or scp to copy a WAL file from the pg_xlog
> directory to an archive directory, there will be a window of time
> where the file exists and is not complete.  If you wait "a while"
> (that being a duration which could be highly variable, depending on
> the specifics of the environment and copy techniques used), the
> missing part of the file will materialize.

Drat.  It looks like we even recommend that configuration in the docs.

Well, I don't know what to do about this, then, but I predict
somebody's going to get bitten by it... hard.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise Postgres Company