Re: could not stat file "pg_wal/RECOVERYHISTORY": No such file or director

On Thu, 2025-10-23 at 21:54 +0000, Dmitry Litvintsev wrote:
> I have been setting PITR backup off of base backup. Wal files are shipped to
> the host running pg_basebackup pulling backup from master host.
>
> Once base backup finished I wanted to try recovery.
>
> I added
>
> restore_command = 'gunzip /data/xlogs/%f.gz > %p'
>
> (that command is wrapped in a script that checks existence of input and exits w/ 0 if it does not as per instructions)
>
> I see in the log:
>
>
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:30.750 CDT 2876871 > LOG: database system was interrupted; last known up at 2025-10-23 02:00:41 CDT
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:31.582 CDT 2876871 > LOG: could not stat file "pg_wal/RECOVERYHISTORY": No such file or directory
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:31.582 CDT 2876871 > DETAIL: restore_command returned a zero exit status, but stat() failed.
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:31.582 CDT 2876871 > LOG: starting archive recovery
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:31.583 CDT 2876871 > LOG: starting backup recovery with redo LSN 20975/FE0AC690, checkpoint LSN 20975/FE21CA88, on timeline ID 4
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:31.586 CDT 2876871 > LOG: could not stat file "pg_wal/RECOVERYHISTORY": No such file or directory
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:31.586 CDT 2876871 > DETAIL: restore_command returned a zero exit status, but stat() failed.
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:31.798 CDT 2876871 > LOG: restored log file "0000000400020975000000FE" from archive
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:31.819 CDT 2876871 > LOG: redo starts at 20975/FE0AC690
> < 2025-10-23 16:05:33.927 CDT 2876871 > LOG: restored log file "0000000400020975000000FF" from archive
>
> it seems to be churning on, but I am a bit worried about :
>
> could not stat file "pg_wal/RECOVERYHISTORY": No such file or directory

I read the code, and that means the following:

- PostgreSQL tries to restore a *.history file to get the timeline history
- it calls "restore_command" to get the next history file and names it RECOVERYHISTORY locally
- "restore_command" exits with a return code 0, but the file is not in "pg_wal"

So it is a way for archive restore to fail, but an unusual way.
Normally, you would expect "restore_command" to have created the file if it returns 0.
So you should improve your "restore_command" if you don't want to see that message.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe