Re: missing history file

Thanks, Simon. I will ignore the request for the history file in my
recovery_command from now on.

Is the timeline history file needed when trying to put the standby server
back into the recovery mode, after it assumed the primary role? (i.e.
standby server goes *live*, and is subsequently restarted in the recovery
mode). Is this a valid scenario at all, or should I be taking a new base
backup and starting over? I am running into some problems when attempting
this.

~george

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Riggs [mailto:simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com]
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 9:42 AM
To: George Wilk
Cc: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] missing history file

On Fri, 2007-06-29 at 07:55 -0400, George Wilk wrote:

> My warm standby server is looking for a history file when booting up.
> It is looking for 00000001.history file to be exact.

Just ignore 00000001. Recovery will work fine even if absent. Don't
ignore all history files though, just that one. Hmmm, come to think of
it, why is it requesting it at all? We should just skip that request.

> Since my *live* server doesn't produce such file, I create an empty
> 00000001.history file in the archive directory and that seems to
> satisfy this requirement allowing the standby server to come up in the
> recovery mode.

Well, that should at least generate a message that says "history file
empty, using targetTLI".

> It would be nice to know though how such file is created. I know that
> the *live* server creates *.backup file as a result of
> pg_stop_backup() command and this file is accurately archived on the
> standby server. Should I be renaming this file, or is there some
> other mechanism to tell my standby server what the history file is?

The timeline history file is only required when you do a recovery of a
system that has itself already undergone a PITR.

Have a look at pg_standby, accessible via CVS in contrib/pg_standby.

--
Simon Riggs
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com