Re: BUG #4548: Documentation Contradiction for 8.3

From: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net>
To: pgsql-bugs(at)postgresql(dot)org
Cc: "Barry Reddy" <barryreddy(at)gmail(dot)com>
Subject: Re: BUG #4548: Documentation Contradiction for 8.3
Date: 2008-11-24 21:55:17
Message-ID: 200811242355.18257.peter_e@gmx.net
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On Monday 24 November 2008 23:37:02 Barry Reddy wrote:
> Can anyone clarify if this apparent contradiction is an oversight ?  Old
> documentation with new archiving documentation patched on, with no
> attention paid to the seeming contradiction on guidelines for filesystem
> backups of a running PG database ?

It is not trivial to understand the difference. Perhaps the documentation
doesn't make that entirely clear.

When you do a base backup with archiving on, that backup is only usable
together with the WAL segments that were written while the backup mode was
active.

So you can either make a backup: shutdown, tar, start
And then recover with: shutdown, untar, start

Or make a backup: pg_start_backup, tar, pg_stop_backup
And then recover with: shutdown, untar, recovery

In particular, it will *not* work to do:

Backup: pg_start_backup, tar, pg_stop_backup
Restore: shutdown, untar, start

So if you read both sections separately, they are correct. It is only the
partial overlap in the otherwise diffferent procedures that is confusing.

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