Hi again,
I setup PostgreSQL 9.2 to try replication and the 9.2 documentation answered my question whereas the 8.4 documentation is missing the section
25.2.2. Standby Server Operation
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/warm-standby.html#STANDBY-SERVER-OPERATION It explains my assumption that if you copy over the last pg_xlog from the Primary, which I can do after safely shutting down postgres, recovery will first apply the WALs from the archive directory and then attempt to recover anything else in pg_xlog, but take priority over the WALs in the archive directory.
As for upgrading to the newer release branch, I'm asking the CentOS community where/how the PostgresSQL version is determined in their repositories. It would be easier if I could continue to use the default Base and Update repositories from CentOS to update postgres, but I don't know when they plan to include 9.x versions.
Andrew
