Re: Any reason to use pg_dumpall on an idle database

On Thu, 25 May 2000, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> > > Well, I am not sure.  In the book, I say you can use a normal file
> > > system backup if the database is idle, or use pg_dumpall and backup the
> > > file it creates.  In fact, once you run pg_dumpall, there is no need to
> > > backup the /data directory except for the few configuration files like
> > > pg_hba.conf.  Does this make sense?
> > 
> > when you mean 'idle', do you mean 'read-only'?  else the files in
> > /data/base/* would be changing, no? 
> 
> No, like everyone has gone home and nothing is happening.

okay, so this is used on an IntraNet where 'schedualed downtime' is an
option ... then doing a shutdown, tar, and startup makes sense ...