Re: archive_command vs. cp -i - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Tim
Subject Re: archive_command vs. cp -i
Date
Msg-id BANLkTinjAm0nQ8Kosv7Q1u4=5UZj4jcFHQ@mail.gmail.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: archive_command vs. cp -i  ("Kevin Grittner" <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov>)
Responses Re: archive_command vs. cp -i  (John Rouillard <rouilj@renesys.com>)
List pgsql-admin

Technically the documentation covers its self by saying:
"This is an example, not a recommendation, and might not work on all platforms."
What would be nice is if the documentation could be made more useful by providing some more complex example scripts.
What do our readers use for WAL archiving?

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Kevin Grittner <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
"Martin Münstermann"<mmuenst@gmx.de> wrote:

> while setting up a new linux postgresql server, I checked my
> archive_command.  I noticed that the usual "cp -i f1 f2 <
> /dev/null" did NOT as expected:  It did not overwrite the file
> (PASS), but it returned zero (FAIL, should return error).
>
> This could be reproduced on CentOS 5.6, RHEL4, and Ubuntu 10.04.

I've confirmed on SLES 10 and Ubuntu 9, too.

> Should the BACKUP-ARCHIVING-WAL doc be changed?

I think so.  Given the wide variety of platforms on which the
example could silently cause data loss, I *really* don't think we
want that in our docs.  Someone could blithely copy it into
production without testing and not know they had it wrong until a
backup failed to restore.

-Kevin

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