Re: backup WAL files,

Hi,
Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> "Sebastian Reitenbach" <sebastia(at)l00-bugdead-prods(dot)de> writes:
> > The WAL files have names like this:
> > 00000001000000010000003C
>
> > I am wonder what the meaning of the two 1 in the filename is?
>
> The first one (the first 8 hex digits actually) are the current
> "timeline" number. The second one isn't very interesting, it's
> an artifact of the way that WAL file locations are converted to
> file names internally.
thanks for this information.

>
> > Are the WAL
> > file names counted up to FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF ?
> > Then I'll run into problems anyways as these int number are too large to
be
> > handled by bash.
>
> You definitely should not expect to convert the names to integers.

Then I do not understand why only the names of the first and the last WAL
file are stored in the backup history file. I assumed that when I count from
the first to the last I catch all WAL files needed for a complete backup.
Then I have no idea how to figure out, which of the WAL files are needed for
the backup job. Or do I have to handle this via the file modification
timestamps?

does anybody has a pointer to documentation where I can read up about how
the names of the WAL files are created/used in postgres?

thanks
Sebastian