Re: Archive logging not cleaning up pg_wal directory

Thank you very much. I had a stale replication slot. I removed it and the
logs were cleaned up immediately.

--Justin

On Thu, Apr 10, 2025 at 8:48 AM Laurenz Albe <laurenz(dot)albe(at)cybertec(dot)at>
wrote:

> On Thu, 2025-04-10 at 08:28 -0400, Justin Swanhart wrote:
> > I have the following in my postgresql.conf for archive logging:
> > archive_command='test ! -f /var/lib/postgresql/prod_archive_logs/%f &&
> cp %p /var/lib/postgresql/prod_archive_logs/%f'
> >
> > This command is properly copying the log files to my archive directory
> but they remain in the `pg_wal`
> > directory after they are copied, consuming hundreds of gigs of space.
> Am I supposed to create a cron
> > job to clean out the `pg_wal` directory periodically (keep only 1 day of
> logs I guess?)
> >
> > I tried to use mv:
> > archive_command='test ! -f /var/lib/postgresql/prod_archive_logs/%f &&
> mv %p /var/lib/postgresql/prod_archive_logs/%f'
> >
> > When I did this the archives were moved away to the archive directory
> but when I tried to set up
> > replication the server could not find the archived log to replicate from
> so I changed it to "cp" and now have this problem.
> >
> > What am I missing?
>
> Something else is blocking WAL removal:
> https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com/en/why-does-my-pg_wal-keep-growing/
>
> Since you mention replication, my money is on a stale replication slot.
>
> Yours,
> Laurenz Albe
>