Tarring hot database files still gives me the willies. But then, I wear belt and suspenders.
I understand. A list of "file changed while we read it" errors is just a little unnerving at first!
I did quite a few end to end backup/PITR tests, and no matter what I did to the DB during backup, no matter how many errors tar or cpio produced, I have been unable to find any problems with the end result.
OTOH, I still take a full base backup every night and keep ten days worth of WAL files on our backup server, so I guess maybe I don't *completely* trust it :-)
-Glen
