public inbox for [email protected]  
help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Jaime Silvela <[email protected]>
To: Jaime Silvela <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: recovery_target_time format explanation should be clarified when using UTC zone
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2025 18:55:21 +0100
Message-ID: <[email protected]> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>

Actually, I had not realized there was a “Submit Correction” link on each documentation page.
Sorry, hope I haven’t made this confusing.

The documentation page that requires clarification is
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-wal.html#RUNTIME-CONFIG-WAL-RECOVERY-TARGET�...
19.5. Write Ahead Log
postgresql.org



> On 29 Oct 2025, at 14:58, PG Doc comments form <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> The following documentation comment has been logged on the website:
> 
> Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/18/index.html
> Description:
> 
> We've been hitting a bug with PITR when specifying a recovery_target_time
> with an ISO 8601 format and UTC zone indicated with a trailing `Z`.
> 
> We get an error like this
> 
> ```
> "msg":"waiting for server to start....2025-10-28 16:40:20.324 UTC [38]
>  LOG:  invalid value for parameter \"recovery_target_time\": \"2025-10-28
> 16:34:15.000000Z\"",
> ```
> 
> The documentation states
> 
>> The value of this parameter is a time stamp in the same format accepted by
> the timestamp with time zone data type, except that you cannot use a time
> zone abbreviation
>> [-snip-]
>> Preferred style is to use a numeric offset from UTC, or you can write a
> full time zone name, e.g., Europe/Helsinki not EEST.
> 
> That `Z`, if it's an abbreviation, would be an abbreviation for Zulu, I
> presume? I tried to use `Zulu` and not just `z` but still had the same
> `invalid value` error.
> 
> For timestamps in UTC zone, I think the only supported format would be
> numeric offset, right? With `+00` instead of `Z`.
> I think that the documentation should clarify this explicitly.
> Unless there is a full name for the UTC zone which I'm unaware of...
> 
> Thanks



Attachments:

  [image/png] elephant.png (49.1K, 3-elephant.png)
  download | view image

reply

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Reply to all the recipients using the --to and --cc options:
  reply via email

  To: [email protected]
  Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
  Subject: Re: recovery_target_time format explanation should be clarified when using UTC zone
  In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

This inbox is served by agora; see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox