> In general, your handling of WAL files seems fragile and error-prone.... Indeed. I would recommend simply using rsync to handle pushing the files. I see several advantages: 1. Distributed load - you aren't copying a full-day of files all at once. 2. Very easy to set-up - you can use it directly as your archive_command if you wish. 3. Atomic. Rsync copies new data to a temporary location that will only be moved into place when the transfer is complete. The destination server will never see a partial file. Depending on the FTP client/server combo, you will likely end up with a partial file in the event of communication failure. 4. Much more up-to-the-minute recovery data. In your scenario, what about using "cp -l" (or "ln") instead? Since the hard-link it is only creating a new pointer, it will be very fast and save a bunch of disk IO on your server and it doesn't appear that the tempdir is for much other than organizing purposes anyway. I'm setting up some test machines to learn more about PITR and warm backups and am considering a two-stage process using "cp -l" to add the file to the list needing transfer and regular rsync to actually move the files to the destination machine. (The destination machine will be over a WAN link so I'd like to avoid having PG tied up waiting for each rsync to complete.) Cheers, Steve ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match