Message-ID: <613e378c68d816e700a694f97d3a49b8afed7678.camel@cybertec.at>
Subject: Re: PostgreSQL Archive Log Partition Reaching 95%
 =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=93?= Need Automated Cleanup
From: Laurenz Albe <laurenz.albe@cybertec.at>
To: loganathan P <plogandba@gmail.com>, pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org
Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:48:01 +0100
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On Tue, 2026-03-03 at 19:51 +0530, loganathan P wrote:
> We have PostgreSQL 15 and PostgreSQL 17 databases running in separate env=
ironments on different servers.
> Each database is approximately 1.5 TB in size and highly active, generati=
ng around 500 GB of archive
> logs per day. We have VM SRM replication configured.
>=20
> The archive log partition reaches 95=E2=80=93100% utilization before back=
ups are taken. After the backups are
> completed, we must manually remove the archived log files to free up spac=
e.
>=20
> Could you please advise whether PostgreSQL has any built-in parameters or=
 mechanisms to automatically
> delete archived log files once they have been successfully backed up?

Since PostgreSQL doesn't know about your archives, there is no way for it t=
o clean
up automatically.  You have to do that yourself.

There is the "pg_archivecleanup" utility that you can use with the backup f=
ile
generated in the WAL archive:

  pg_archivecleanup /mnt/server/archivedir 000000010000000000000010.0000002=
0.backup

The easiest way would be to use a backup software like pgBackRest that does=
 these
things for you.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe