Hi I've implemented replication to a warm standby using wal logshipping now. The only remaining problem is that there is no way in 8.1 to force postgres to close the current wal segment, and start using a new one. Therefor, if there is little traffic, changes can take a long time to actually replicate, increasing the time-window of chances which might be lost in case of a crash. I believe that people are solving this by periodically copying the currently used wal to the backup server. I'd like to implement that scheme, but am unsure how to determine that segment reliably. I noticed that there is an pg_xlog/archive_status directory, which contains *.done files for some of the archived wal logs. Can I safely assume that the wal with the smallest serial number for which there is no corresponding file in archive_status is the current used wal? At the moment pg_xlog/archive_status contains: 00000001000000020000007E.00F95E0C.backup.done 000000010000000200000087.done 000000010000000200000088.don while pg_xlog contains: 00000001000000020000007E.00F95E0C.backup 000000010000000200000087 000000010000000200000088 000000010000000200000089 00000001000000020000008A 00000001000000020000008B 00000001000000020000008C 00000001000000020000008D 00000001000000020000008E My guess is that 000000010000000200000089 is currently used, and that 00000001000000020000008A - 00000001000000020000008E where created for future use (Why I wouldn't know). Is that assumption correct? greetings, Florian Pflug
