On Wed, 2007-05-09 at 11:40 -0500, Jim Nasby wrote: > Actually, looking at the docs, the problem is with some versions of > GNU tar. AFAIK bsdtar is perfectly happy to archive files that have > changed from underneath it. > $ tar --version bsdtar 1.2.53 - libarchive 1.3.1 That fails to create a file in proper gzip format when the files are concurrently modified. However, $ tar --version tar (GNU tar) 1.14 Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This program comes with NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. You may redistribute it under the terms of the GNU General Public License; see the file named COPYING for details. Written by John Gilmore and Jay Fenlason. That _appears_ to work. Perhaps FreeBSD users should take notice of this problem. It's certainly not a postgresql problem, but I know there are a lot of freebsd users here, and using tar on fast-changing data may be rare outside of postgresql. Regards, Jeff Davis