Recovery issue

Hi L:sters,

We're at postgresql 8.2.5. I'm running PITR backups on our production server
and copying the resulting tarball and the WAL logs to our reporting server.
I restart the reporting server and begin re-playing logs. Everything
works fine for about 3 days until a network outage creates a gap in the
WAL log copies. The reporting server interprets this as the end of the
logs and comes up in ready mode.

I need to begin recovery at that point and continue to replay logs.
I asked this question last week with no clue how to proceed.
Now I throw an idea out to the group. Can I take a full file copy on
the reporting server and continue to play logs at the point the last
recovery terminated?

Procedure in summary:

1. Start archive logging on the reporting server.
(Since no updates are occurring on this server there
should be no logs archived. but I need to start archive
logging to enable pg_start_backup)
2. select pg_start_backup('new_backup')
3 tar -czvf (the data cluster)
4. select pg_stop_backup();
5. stop the server. Remove the data cluster
6. tar xvf the backup -replenish the data cluster
7 remove postmaster.pid, (pg_xlogs already removed from backup)
8. restart the server using recovery.conf to start copying the
accumulated archive logs from the production server

Possible? Or pipe dream?

Any ideas welcome. Thank you,

Mark Steben
Database Administrator
AutoRevenue