Re: pg_start_backup and pg_stop_backup Re: Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql: Make CheckRequiredParameterValues() depend upon correct

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 1:39 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
> Robert Haas wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 12:22 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
>> > Tom Lane wrote:
>> >> Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> writes:
>> >> > Tom Lane wrote:
>> >> >> If you aren't archiving then there's no guarantee that you'll still have
>> >> >> a continuous WAL series starting from the start of the backup.
>> >>
>> >> > I wasn't really thinking of this use case, but you could set
>> >> > wal_keep_segments "high enough".
>> >>
>> >> Ah. ?Okay, that seems like a workable approach, at least for people with
>> >> reasonably predictable WAL loads. ?We could certainly improve on it
>> >> later to make it more bulletproof, but it's usable now --- if we relax
>> >> the error checks.
>> >>
>> >> (wal_keep_segments can be changed without restarting, right?)
>> >
>> > Should we allow -1 to mean "keep all segments"?
>>
>> If that's what you want to do, use archive_mode.
>
> Uh, I assume that will require me to store the WAL files somewhere else,
> rather than keeping them in /pg_xlog, which I thought was the goal.  Am
> I missing something?

Well, one of us is.  Why would you want to retain all of your WAL logs
in pg_xlog forever?

...Robert