Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:12:11 +0000 (GMT)
From: Jaume Sabater <jsabater@linuxsilo.net>
To: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Message-ID: <20560805.1971225455131817.JavaMail.root@zimbra.linuxsilo.net>
In-Reply-To: <490A1668.6000107@otg-nc.com>
Subject: Re: Deleting old archived WAL files
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Chander Ganesan wrote:

> Note: If you are using 8.3, you can even just disable the
> archive_command when you aren't doing a recovery...

Hmmm... after reading these pages:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/continuous-archiving.html#BACKUP-ARCHIVING-WAL
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/runtime-config-wal.html#GUC-ARCHIVE-COMMAND

I understand that, if the archive_command is set to an empty string, then WAL files will accumulate in pg_xlog/ until a working archive_command is re-established.

So, should I set the archive_command parameter to any of these?

1. exit 0
2. cp %p /dev/null

Or something similar. I mean this as I have no intention to preserve them unless I am doing an online recovery, in which case I would actually set a meaningful value into that parameter:

archive_command = '/bin/cp %p /var/lib/postgresql/pg_xlog_archive/%f'

-- 
Jaume Sabater
http://linuxsilo.net/

"Ubi sapientas ibi libertas"