On Nov 8, 2007 9:39 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > "Peter Childs" <peterachilds@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > > On 08/11/2007, Albe Laurenz <laurenz.albe@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> So if we perform our database backups with incremental > >> backups as described above, we could end up with additional > >> files after the restore, because PostgreSQL files can get > >> deleted (e.g. during DROP TABLE or TRUNCATE TABLE). > >> > >> Could such "resurrected" files (data files, files in > >> pg_xlog, pg_clog or elsewhere) cause a problem for the database > >> (other than the obvious one that there may be unnecessary files > >> about that consume disk space)? > > > This will not work at all. > > To be more specific: the resurrected files aren't the problem; > offhand I see no reason they'd create any issue beyond wasted > disk space. The problem is version skew between files that were > backed up at slightly different times, leading to inconsistency. > > You could make this work if you shut down Postgres whenever you > are taking a backup, but as a means for backing up a live database > it indeed won't work at all. I think if you had real snapshotting file systems you could use the snapshots to create your backups. But this seems like a lot of work to avoid implementing PITR to me. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 3: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faq