Massive insert created 975 WAL segments.. what?

[Wells Oliver <wellsoliver@xxxxxxxxx>]

We were doing a test and inserted 1.5 million rows. In doing so, postgres created 974 WAL segments of 16MB apiece. The relevant configuration from my master's postgresql.conf:

wal_level         = hot_standby

archive_mode      = on

archive_command   = 'test ! -f /mnt/postgresql-logs/%f && cp %p /mnt/postgresql-logs/%f'

max_wal_senders   = 3 

wal_keep_segments = 16

So, now I have 16GB of WAL segments, 974 of them. Will postgresql clean this up? Will it remove these files? Will it create more with big inserts?

What is the best way to manage this?

--
Wells Oliver
wellsoliver@xxxxxxxxx