Alan Hodgson wrote:
On Wednesday 18 June 2008, Craig Ringer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
  Every file from /var/lib/pgsql/ before I started this is on the
weekly backup tape from last Friday night. If need be I can restore
from that and start over.
Well, no worries then. I'm sure you can understand that for many people
- way TOO many people - that is not the case, so it's well worth
stressing the point.

If the database was in use when _that_ backup was taken, it may also not be usable.

You can't just backup a live database from the filesystem level and expect it to work ...

It should be OK, if less than ideal, if:

- You have fsync enabled (which you do if you care about your data); and
- Your filesystem supports consistent snapshots

If you can take a point-in-time snapshot at the filesystem level and copy that, it should be OK. Pg will still have to do a bunch of work when started up off the restored data, though.

It makes much more sense to just warn Pg about the copy about to be taken, or use pg_dump . Any decent backup system will provide hooks to run pre- and post- scripts to do this sort of thing.

--
Craig Ringer

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