Rick Gigger <rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > That's what I mean by invalid. Let's say I do something stupid and > do a physical backup and I don't grab the current WAL file. All I > have is the last one to be archived before I did my backup, which is > not late enough to do a valid restore. Will postgres know that the > restore process failed because I didn't have that last necessary WAL > file or will it just start up in a potentially inconsistent state. Yes: /* * Complain if we did not roll forward far enough to render the backup * dump consistent. */ if (XLByteLT(EndOfLog, recoveryMinXlogOffset)) { if (needNewTimeLine) /* stopped because of stop request */ ereport(FATAL, (errmsg("requested recovery stop point is before end time of backup dump"))); else /* ran off end of WAL */ ereport(FATAL, (errmsg("WAL ends before end time of backup dump"))); } regards, tom lane