Re: PITR, checkpoint, and local relations

> So I think what will work then is pg_copy (hot backup) would:
> 1) Issue an ALTER SYSTEM BEGIN BACKUP command which turns on 
> atomic write,
> checkpoints the database and disables further checkpoints (so 
> wal files
> won't be reused) until the backup is complete.
> 2) Change ALTER SYSTEM BACKUP DATABASE TO <directory> read 
> the database
> directory to find which files it should backup rather than 
> pg_class and for
> each file just use system(cp...) to copy it to the backup directory.

Did you consider saving backup on the client host (ie from where
pg_copy started)?

> 3) ALTER SYSTEM FINISH BACKUP does at it does now and backs 
> up the pg_xlog
> directory and renables database checkpointing.

Well, wouldn't be single command ALTER SYSTEM BACKUP enough?
What's the point to have 3 commands?

(If all of this is already discussed then sorry - I'm not going
to start new discussion).

Vadim