"J. R. Nield" <jrnield(at)usol(dot)com> writes:
>> (In particular, I *strongly* object to using the buffer manager at all
>> for reading files for backup. That's pretty much guaranteed to blow out
>> buffer cache. Use plain OS-level file reads. An OS directory search
>> will do fine for finding what you need to read, too.)
> How do you get atomic block copies otherwise?
Eh? The kernel does that for you, as long as you're reading the
same-size blocks that the backends are writing, no?
regards, tom lane