On Tue, 2007-11-20 at 15:19 +0100, Albe Laurenz wrote:
> "We will fail to restore a consistent database state"
> sounds rather intimidating.
Well, how else should a warning of data loss sound? :-)
It's vaguely possible that the database state could be consistent, if
the server were quiet when you stopped it. But that is unlikely *and*
there is no way of knowing for certain, that is why we introduced
pg_stop_backup() in the first place.
> *If* - on the other hand - it is safe to follow the hint
> and remove the backup_label, wouldn't it be a good thing
> for the startup process to ignore (and rename) the backup_label
> file if no recovery.conf is present?
The hint is telling you how to restart the original server, not a crafty
way of cheating the process to allow you to use it for backup.
What are you trying to do?
-- Simon Riggs 2ndQuadrant http://www.2ndQuadrant.com
