From: Yauheni Labko <yyl@chappy.com>
Reply-To: yyl@chappy.com
Organization: Chapdelaine & Co
To: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: standby waiting for what?
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 10:04:44 -0500
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> my recovery command is:
> restore_command='/usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_standby 
> /data/pgsql/wals/alerts_oamp %f %p %r >>
> /home/postgresql/log/alerts_oamp/recovery.log'

You gave the recovery command, not the archive command.  And give a piece of 
log file where primary server performs archiving WAL files.

> I don't follow you here.  How did you know that the string,
> 00000002000000000000001C.00512178.backup will provide the start and
> end of WAL segment?  Please explain how you determined this?

*.backup files are ASCII files. They're described at 24.3.2 section of 
postgres documentation.

> I have a suspicion that if I mv
> /data/pgsql/wals/alerts_oamp/00000002000000000000001C to
> /data/pgsql/wals/alerts_oamp/00000002000000000000001C.00512178.backup that
> the recovery would pick up.  If there is no understanding to be gained
> here, I might do that and then throw this out with the bath water and start
> over.

May be you will fix the problem at this point. But you will never know why 
database server wants to grab this file.

> confusion.  I'm just rsyncing the cluster dir from the primary to the
> standby, removing pg_xlogs files, and setting recovery.conf.  Is there
> a better way?

I think you have problem at this point. Did you switch primary database server 
into backup mode? Where are the archived WAL files? Did you switch primary 
database server back into normal operation mode after rsyncing?

Yauheni Labko (Eugene Lobko)
Junior System Administrator
Chapdelaine & Co.
(212)208-9150