Streaming replication, master recycling

Hi All,

we are currently using streaming replication on multiple node pairs. We are seeing some issues, but I am mainly interrested in clarification.

When a failover occurs, we touch the trigger file, promoting the previous slave to master. That works perfectly.

For recycling the previous master, we create a recovery.conf (with recovery_target_timeline = 'latest') and *try* to start up. If postgresql starts up, we accept it as a new slave. If it does not, we proceed with a full basebackup.

This approach seems to work, but I have found indications that it can lead to database corruption: <http://hlinnaka.iki.fi/presentations/NordicPGDay2015-pg_rewind.pdf>

I am mainly seeking understanding of if and why this approach is a bad idea.

Thanks,
Fredrik Huitfeldt