Robert Inder schrieb am 12.03.2015 um 12:52:
> Postgres on the standby machine is continually reading those files.
> But that is all it will do. "pg_dump" just says "The database is starting up".
>
> Could/should I have something configured differently?
>
> Or Is this something that has changed with Postgres 9?
> We're currently running Postgres 8.4.
> Is this my specific reason to embark on an upgrade?
8.4 cannot run queries on the standby, you need to upgrade to a supported/maintained version for this
(this feature was introduced in 9.0)
In 9.x you can start the slave as a "hot standby" to allow read only queries which is what pg_dump needs.
You should really upgrade to a current version 9.4 or 9.3
Thomas