On 12/06/13 13:40, Denish Patel wrote:
> Jeff,
>
> If you remove pg_xlogs, I do not expect Postgres to come back!
>
> I think Craig is referring to WAL files , not pg_xlogs. He is still going to
> take backup of pg_xlogs under $PGDATA when Postgres is still down.
>
> I think there is some misunderstanding here!
>
I think the misunderstanding might be that you mean *archived* WAL files, and
I mean WAL files in the PGDATA directory.
I think the latter is what the OP means, but I'm not certain.
So, no, you do not need archiving enabled to take a cold backup, but you do
need all the WAL files from the pg_xlog directory per mine and Kevin's quick test.