Re: using pg_basebackup for point in time recovery

Hi Pierre,

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 08:06:31AM +0000, Pierre Timmermans wrote:
> Hi Michael

You should avoid top-posting on the Postgres lists, this is not the
usual style used by people around :)

> Thanks for the confirmation. Your rewording removes the confusion. I
> would maybe take the opportunity to re-instate that pg_dump cannot be
> used for PITR, so in the line of
> "These are backups that could be used for point-in-time recovery if
> combined with a WAL archive able to recover up to the wanted recovery
> point.  These backups are typically much faster to backup and restore
> than pg_dump for large deployments but can result as well in larger
> backup sizes, so the speed of one method or the other is to evaluate
> carefully first. Consider also that pg_dump backups cannot be used for
> point-in-time recovery."

Attached is a patch which includes your suggestion. What do you think?
As that's an improvement, only HEAD would get that clarification.

>  Maybe the confusion stems from the fact that if you restore a
> standalone (self-contained) pg_basebackup then - by default - recovery
> is done with the recovery_target immediate option, so if one needs
> point-in-time recovery he has to edit the recovery.conf and brings the
> archives..

Perhaps. There is really nothing preventing one to add a recovery.conf
afterwards, which is also why pg_basebackup -R exists. I do that as
well for some of the framework I work with and maintain.
--
Michael