Re: pgbackrest when data/base is symlinked to another volume - Mailing list pgsql-general

Hi Ron,

On 9/6/18 11:21 PM, Ron wrote:
> 
> Will pgbackrest properly backup and restore the cluster if data/base, 
> data/pg_xlog and data/pg_log are symlinks?
> 
> PGDATA=/var/lib/pgsql/9.6/data
> $PGDATA/base -> /Database/9.6/base
> $PGDATA/pg_log -> /Database/9.6/pg_log
> $PGDATA/pg_xlog -> /Database/9.6/pg_xlog

Yes, this will work.  Note that restore does not recreate symlinks by 
default so you'll need to specify --link-all to enable symlink creation.

See 
https://pgbackrest.org/configuration.html#section-restore/option-link-all 
for details.

Using symlinks in this way will make management of your clusters more 
difficult, mostly because systems need more provisioning before restores 
can be performed.  In general I'd recommend against it unless there are 
performance considerations.

Also, you might consider using log_directory to relocate log files 
rather than a symlink.  This will exclude log files from your backup 
which is usually preferable -- primary logs restored to a standby are 
out of context and can cause confusion.

Regards,
-- 
-David
david@pgmasters.net