We need to be careful as to what we mean by "data directory". A typical PostgreSQL installation has a directory *named* "data" which *should* be backed up. It contains configuration and access-control data, perhaps X.509 certificates to enable TLS-encrypted access, some small files used for restarting, and several directories that hold transaction logs and the like.
Also (typically) inside the "data" directory is the "base" directory which contains the actual table backing-store. There is no point in doing a file-wise backup of the "base" directory or any of its dependents. There is a significant probability that such a snapshot would result in an inconsistent database should it be restored. The proper way to back up this information is through pg_dump or pg_dumpall. What I usually do is to have a cron job run pg_dumpall and direct the output to a file such as 'db.tar.gz' somewhere associated with PostgreSQL. On a Gentoo Linux system, that would be /var/lib/postgresql (which contains the "data" directory). Then the regular file-wise tape backup will capture a consistent dump of the tables. I don't yet know whether it is useful to back up all of the other subdirectories of "data", but we do that. pg_log contains message logs and would be useful. Some system backup products may offer agents that can consistently back up PostgreSQL database clusters. We use DataProtector and, alas, it doesn't have such an agent. If you *do* have such an agent available, that's probably a better approach than mine. -- Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Typically when a software vendor says that a product is "intuitive" he means the exact opposite.
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