Re: how to truncate/purge the pg_xlog directory?

> tfinneid(at)student(dot)matnat(dot)uio(dot)no wrote:
>
> OK, so that's 7 files?
> What is your checkpoint_segments setting in postgresql.conf? If it's 3
> then you can indeed expect a maximum of 7 WAL files. For a low-activity
> system you can always turn the setting down.

The setting was not set, so I expect that it used the default value of 3.
I tried setting it to 1, and restarted the server, but nothing happened
with the directories. Is there something that triggers the cleaning of it?

Another thing, I dont understand how a setting of 3 leads to 7 files since
one segment is 16MB, 3 segments should be be 3 files i.e. 48MB not 113MB.
Am I misunderstanding something?

>> Also the base/ directory is 268MB big and still not many tables, is ti
>> possible to purge that directory as well?.
>
> You might find the "pg_xxx_size()" functions useful - they are detailed
> in the functions/system-admin chapter of the manuals.

Can you be a bit more specific? I tried looking for it, but the sections
are too big to just browse unknown information.