Re: Removing archived wal files on Master

Hi Fabio,
Yes, For now I’m planning on using PITR approach until we can get a second server on which I will then introduce replication.

I wish to start fresh on this current server so would like to first get rid of those 200GB files and then do a base backup followed by wal archival.

I was a bit hesitant on whether deleting these 200gb files would cause unwanted side effects.

Regards,
Michael

> On 22 Feb 2019, at 8:24 pm, Fabio Pardi <f(dot)pardi(at)portavita(dot)eu> wrote:
>
> Hi Michael,
>
> archived WAL files are not only useful to a standby server, but are also used for Point In Time Recovery.
>
> regards,
>
> fabio
>
>> On 22-02-19 12:19, Michael King wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I recently acquired a legacy server. This is running Postgresql 9.3 on Ubuntu 16.04.
>> There is around 200GB worth of archived wal files (~12,500 files) located on /var/lib/postgresql/9.3/main/archive.
>> I have checked and can confirm that this is a standalone server without any Replication setup and no secondary/slave server talking to it.
>>
>> Checking the /etc/postgresql/9.3/main/postgresql.conf file (write ahead log section), shows the following:
>> wal_level = minimal
>> archive_mode = off
>> archive_command = 'test ! -f /var/lib/postgresql/9.3/main/archive/%f && cp -i %p /var/lib/postgresql/9.3/main/archive/%f </dev/null'
>>
>> Replication section shows all default values.
>>
>> Could you please advice how I can cleanup all of these 200GB worth of files.
>> I've searched through numerous postgresql books/blogs/articles which all have very good advise on how to setup wal archiving but unfortunately not on how to disable it.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Michael
>>
>