Archive logging not cleaning up pg_wal directory
Justin Swanhart <greenlion@gmail.com>
From: Justin Swanhart <greenlion@gmail.com>
To: pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org
Date: 2025-04-10T12:28:36Z
Lists: pgsql-general
Hi, I have the following in my postgresql.conf for archive logging: archive_command='test ! -f /var/lib/postgresql/prod_archive_logs/%f && cp %p /var/lib/postgresql/prod_archive_logs/%f' This command is properly copying the log files to my archive directory but they remain in the `pg_wal` directory after they are copied, consuming hundreds of gigs of space. Am I supposed to create a cron job to clean out the `pg_wal` directory periodically (keep only 1 day of logs I guess?) I tried to use mv: archive_command='test ! -f /var/lib/postgresql/prod_archive_logs/%f && mv %p /var/lib/postgresql/prod_archive_logs/%f' When I did this the archives were moved away to the archive directory but when I tried to set up replication the server could not find the archived log to replicate from so I changed it to "cp" and now have this problem. What am I missing? Regards, --Justin