Recovery/Restore and Roll Forward Question.

From: Bruce McAlister <bruce(dot)mcalister(at)blueface(dot)ie>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Recovery/Restore and Roll Forward Question.
Date: 2007-06-21 09:24:46
Message-ID: f5dg4p$oqv$1@news.hub.org
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Hi All,

Is it at all possible to "roll forward" a database with archive logs
when it has been recovered using a dump?

Assuming I have the archive_command and archive_timeout parameters set
on our "live" system, then I follow these steps:

[1] pg_dump -d database > /backup/database.dump,
[2] initdb new instance on recovery machine,
[3] psql -f ./database.dump,
[4] shutdown new recovered db,
[5] create recovery.conf,
[6] copy WAL's from time of backup till time of recovery to temp dir
[7] start postgresql

In my mind I think I will have some problems somewhere along the way,
however I don't know enough about the internals of PostgreSQL to
actually see if there are additional steps I need to follow.

In our environment it takes approx 2 hours to perform a PIT backup of
our live system:

[1] select pg_start_backup('labe;')
[2] cpio & compress database directory (exclude wals)
[3] select pg_stop_backup()

However, if we perform a plain dump (pg_dump/pg_dumpall) we can dump the
whole lot in 15 minutes. For us this is more efficient.

The question is, how can we roll forward from our time of pg_dump, to
our most recent WAL (in case of failure - touch wood).

Any comments/suggestions are most welcome. if anyone knows of some docs
or reference info about the way we're trying to follow, please could you
let me know.

Thanks
Bruce

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