Re: pg_xlog and standby

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Roberto Scattini wrote:

> the problem that im having is that i have A LOT of
> archive files on pg_xlog dir, and thats because the archive_command
> keeps failing (the standby server had filled his disk with archives
> received but not proccesed), so now, i dont know how i can remove
> those files and start again...

Under normal operation the checkpoint process will look at the number of
already created archive files, keep around up to (2*checkpoint_segments+1)
of them for future use, and delete the rest of them. You never delete
them yourself, the server will take care of that automatically once it
gets to where it makes that decision. If you set checkpoint_segments to
some very high number they can end up taking many GB worth of storage,
increasing that parameter has at least two costs associated with it (the
other being a longer recovery time).

Managing old archive logs on the backup server is your problem and related
tools like pg_standby help deal with that. Managing them on the primary
server is that server's problem and you shouldn't touch them. You can
execute a manual CHECKPOINT at the psql prompt if you want to force this
reclaimation to happen (there has to have been some activity since the
last checkpoint for this to work which doesn't sound like a problem on
your server).

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD