Thread: BUG #8450: pg_basebackup blocks until WAL archiving successful
The following bug has been logged on the website: Bug reference: 8450 Logged by: Stuart Bishop Email address: stuart@stuartbishop.net PostgreSQL version: 9.1.9 Operating system: all Description: Hi. pg_basebackup blocks until all necessary WAL files have been archived by archive_command. This can take a few minutes under normal circumstances, and indefinitely if archive_command is failing. I would like to be able to disable this check, as I am streaming backups to a system that can time out my connection if it does not receive new data for a short while. This makes unattended backups problematic.
On 13.09.2013 15:13, stuart@stuartbishop.net wrote: > pg_basebackup blocks until all necessary WAL files have been archived by > archive_command. This can take a few minutes under normal circumstances, and > indefinitely if archive_command is failing. > > I would like to be able to disable this check, as I am streaming backups to > a system that can time out my connection if it does not receive new data for > a short while. This makes unattended backups problematic. I can see why you'd want that, but it seems equally problematic to let pg_basebackup return, when the WAL files haven't been archived yet and you therefore don't in fact have valid, restorable backup yet. Have you considered using the --xlog-method=stream option, to include the WAL files in the backup? That will make your backups somewhat larger, as the WAL files are included, but in that mode pg_basebackup won't wait for the archival and the backup will be restorable even if archive_command is failing. - Heikki
On Mon, Sep 23, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Heikki Linnakangas > I can see why you'd want that, but it seems equally problematic to let > pg_basebackup return, when the WAL files haven't been archived yet and you > therefore don't in fact have valid, restorable backup yet. Have you > considered using the --xlog-method=stream option, to include the WAL files > in the backup? That will make your backups somewhat larger, as the WAL files > are included, but in that mode pg_basebackup won't wait for the archival and > the backup will be restorable even if archive_command is failing. I'm supporting PG 9.1 at the moment so cannot rely on --xlog-method=stream. I agree that the current behavior is for most use cases better, and I think that the behavior I want should be explicitly enabled with an option. -- Stuart Bishop <stuart@stuartbishop.net> http://www.stuartbishop.net/