Re: Stuck trying to backup large database - best practice?

<some snippage>

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 5:31 PM, Adrian Klaver
<adrian.klaver@aklaver.com> wrote:
>
> On 01/12/2015 07:20 AM, Antony Gelberg wrote:
>>
>> pg_basebackup: could not get transaction log end position from server:
>> ERROR: requested WAL segment 0000000400002B9F000000B4 has already been
>> removed
>>
>> This attempted backup reached 430GB before failing.
>
>
> It fails because the WAL file it needs has been removed from under it.
>

Okay.  We simply understood that it took too long.  Clearly we have a
lot to learn about WAL and its intricacies.

>> We were advised on IRC to try -Xs, but that only works with a plain
>> (uncompressed) backup, and as you'll note from above, we don't have
>> enough disk space for this.
>>
>> Is there anything else we can do apart from get a bigger disk (not
>> trivial at the moment)?  Any best practice?
>
> What is the purpose of the backup?
>
> In other words do really want the data and the WALs together or do you
> just want the data?

No, we just want to be able to restore our data at a later point.  (As
as secondary point, it's not that clear to me why it would be useful
to have both, I'd be interested for some insight.)

Antony