Re: PITR and base + full backups

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008, Joey K. wrote:

> (1) pg_start_backup(`date`)
> (2) perform hot rsync first (while the database is running)
> $ rsync -avr pgdata /backup/`date`/
> (3) stop pg

You need to call pg_stop_backup() here and wait until the last WAL file it
references has been archived before this backup is complete.  You can't
finish that backup with pg_stop_backup after the server has been stopped.
The upcoming PostgreSQL 8.4 won't even let you stop the server normally if
a backup is in process because you're not supposed to do that.

If you're running 8.2 or later, you can set archive_timeout to bound how
long it will take before that last segment shows up, or you can manually
call pg_switch_xlog.  See http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Warm_Standby for
how to force that on 8.1 (and the walkthrough on that page may be helpful
to you as well).

--
* Greg Smith gsmith@gregsmith.com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD