Re: pgbackrest after a network outage unable to perform backup [fails always]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 9:20 PM Greg Sabino Mullane <htamfids(at)gmail(dot)com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 5:18 AM KK CHN <kkchn(dot)in(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> This goes for hours now, not yet finished. Is this normal behaviour ?
>>
>
> Yes, if there is a lot of WAL
>
> My goal is to initiate a full backup afresh on the reposerver , so it
>> doesn't matter all the old piled up WAL files
>>
>
> You will need to (carefully!) disable pgbackrest archiving, clean up the
> old WAL, then start it up again. Basic sequence:
>
> 1. Set archive_command to '/bin/true'
> 2. Kill any existing pgbackrest processes, empty out the spool directory
> 3. Wait for Postgres to cleanup / recycle the WAL (speed up with a manual
> CHECKPOINT)
> 4. Restore your archive_command to the pgbackrest version
> 5. Run pgbackrest check to verify WALs are being archived again
> 6. Run a full backup
>
> Ideally, test these steps on a dev system, and understand why each step
> and why in that order. :)
>

Thank you Greg .

>
>
> Cheers,
> Greg
>
> --
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> Enterprise Postgres Software Products & Tech Support
>
>