Hi: Well, I don't really like the fact that admin has to specify the archiving and restoring command; an error here (a lack of -i in cp, for example) may render the backup useless. In addition, the backup is performed only everytime the WAL file is filled; i need to take consistent backups every hour or so, and I am not sure if that time represents more or less than a WAL file ( i could still measure that, i guess). Finally, as I understand, the WAL backup method works like this: 1) Take full base FS backup 2) get some way to copy WAL files If this is it, then I'll end up with an old level zero (i.e. full, base ) backup and A LOT of level 1 (i.e. transaction log) backup. I think it should be more like it's for Informix, where you ask the database to perform an online level 0 backup (base); after this, it stores transaction logs on disk, which you can archive with level 1 backup. Then, say everyonce in a week, you get another level 0 backup, and the database clears the already-archived logs from disk and starts all over. I guess this could be achieved with PG, but it requieres considerably more steps (pg_start_backup, pg_stop_backup, manually cleaning old log files which could be an error point), or I am getting something wrong. Besides, why do you need to tell the database to stop the backup? shouldn't it stop by itself when there's no more information to be archived? Perhaps if any of you has this method working, you could provide me with your archiving and restoring commands as well as a description of the whole process the way you implemented it. Thanks, Eduardo. On Wednesday 13 December 2006 02:39, Shoaib Mir wrote: > To me PITR looks like a very nice solution for incremental backup and even > they can serve as a warm standby. What exactly are the complications you > see with WAL archiving? > > --------------- > Shoaib Mir > EnterpriseDB (www.enterprisedb.com) > > On 12/13/06, Eduardo J. Ortega <ejortegau@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi there: > > > > Are there any nice (official or third party) backup utilities for > > postgres? I > > have a database which is several GB, so pg_dumping it to file and then > > bzipping2 every hour is not really the way to go. I've read a little > > about using WAL for incremental backup, but it sounds a little > > complicated and *very* user-error prone. > > > > (Not sure if this is the right place for it, but i really think that PG's > > developers should consider including a viable backup utility in the next > > version) > > > > thanks. > > > > -- > > Eduardo J. Ortega - Linux user #222873 > > "No fake - I'm a big fan of konqueror, and I use it for everything." -- > > Linus > > Torvalds > > > > ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- > > TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster -- Eduardo J. Ortega - Linux user #222873 "No fake - I'm a big fan of konqueror, and I use it for everything." -- Linus Torvalds
