This is not true or at the very least confusing
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/backup-file.html says "The database server *must* be shut down in order to get a usable backup." Note: must is in italics. Then we have section 25.3.3.1. Making A Non-Exclusive Low-Level Backup which contradicts this statement with "Perform the backup, using any convenient file-system-backup tool such as tar or cpio (not pg_dump or pg_dumpall). It is neither necessary nor desirable to stop normal operation of the database while you do this." While I understand this is a complex topic. I think at the very least we can refer to section 25.3.3.1 in section 25.2. I also think that the discussion about frozen snapshots is ill advised. If I were doing it I would use pg_start_backup before using any file system snapshot. Regards, Dave Cramer
Re: This is not true or at the very least confusing
On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 7:50 PM Dave Cramer wrote: > https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/backup-file.html says > "The database server *must* be shut down in order to get a usable backup." > > Note: must is in italics. > > Then we have section 25.3.3.1. Making A Non-Exclusive Low-Level Backup > which contradicts this statement with "Perform the backup, using any > convenient file-system-backup tool such as tar or cpio (not pg_dump or > pg_dumpall). It is neither necessary nor desirable to stop normal > operation of the database while you do this." > > While I understand this is a complex topic. I think at the very least we > can refer to section 25.3.3.1 in section 25.2. I also think that the > discussion about frozen snapshots is ill advised. If I were doing it I > would use pg_start_backup before using any file system snapshot. > > Another thing we've talked about on this topic before (but never got around to doing all the way) is to re-order things so that the current 25.3 chapter comes before 25.2. And making sure we put the simple yet correct solutions like pg_basebackup first, and put complicated ones later. And we should really chance the title of what's now 25.2 to explicitly be called "offline file system backups" as well. //Magnus
Re: Another modest proposal for docs formatting: catalog descriptions
Hello Tom, Here's a more fully fleshed out draft for this, with stylesheet markup to get extra space around the column type names. I find this added spacing awkward, espacially as attribute names are always one word anyway. I prefer the non spaced approach. If spacing is discussed, should the layout rather try to align type information, eg: attributetype description --- foo bla this does this and that ... and here is an example about it --- foo-foo-foo bla-bla whatever bla bla blah bla foo foo foo ... and stuff I'm not sure how achievable it is from a xml & processing point of view, and how desirable it is, I'm just throwing it for consideration. -- Fabien.
