syncing, replicating & crash recovery Q's

Hi,

I was hoping one of the contributors here on the list could point me in
the right direction with some of the issues I am currently facing with
postgres 6.5.0

I apologize if these topics have been thoroughly discussed before, but I
wasn't able to find anything in the archives.

For these questions, assume that the slave and master are separate
machines each running postmaster, but the postgres data files are
mounted on the same physical (but on different partitions) raid-5
server.

1) real-time syncing
Is it possible to have a "slave" postgres server (a separate machine)
doing nothing but syncing to a master? If the master were to go down,
the slave would be up-to-date and ready to handle connection requests
almost instantly.

2) Replicating
If #1 isn't possible, what would be the best way to periodically sync
the two databases? Would it be possible to exchange deltas (the slave's
only job is to duplicate the master) or would a complete backup and
restore frome one machine to another be necessary?

3) Crash-Recovery!!
The documentation does not have this section filled in. So I'm not even
sure whether or not postgres maintains transaction logging or some other
way to recover from a serious crash. Can someone please give me the
scoop on the current state of this, or what should be done to recover
from a crash?

Are there any other concerns or technologies I'm not aware of that might
be of use?

All comments appreciated!

Thanks,
Bryan Ingram

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