Re: 9.2 documentation/configuration question

Jay at Verizon wrote
> checkpoint_timeout = 5min #default

This impacts the primary machine only and ensures that regardless of the
lack of activity a crash will only need to REDO that last five minutes of
history since everything prior to that will already have been persisted to
the data files.

> archive_timeout=3600

This impacts how far, in time, the archive can be behind the master in a
low-volume situation. This is because only complete (16MB) WAL files are
shipped. In a low volume situation it may take several active
checkpoint_timeout periods (not to mention zero activity periods) to
generate enough data to fill up a single 16MB file.

In a low volume situation a single WAL will have multiple checkpoint
records. In a high volume situation there will be many WAL files that have
no checkpoint records. This later situation being the reason for the
"checkpoint_segments" parameter.

So the archive will never be more than 16MB behind the master but the
corresponding time period is unbounded in the absence of archive_timeout.
The master will always be up-to-date but the amount of time needed for
recovery is bounded either by time or size - which ever one comes first.

David J.

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