On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 7:50 PM Dave Cramer <davecra...@gmail.com> wrote:
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/backup-file.html says > "The database server *must* be shut down in order to get a usable backup." > > Note: must is in italics. > > Then we have section 25.3.3.1. Making A Non-Exclusive Low-Level Backup > which contradicts this statement with "Perform the backup, using any > convenient file-system-backup tool such as tar or cpio (not pg_dump or > pg_dumpall). It is neither necessary nor desirable to stop normal > operation of the database while you do this." > > While I understand this is a complex topic. I think at the very least we > can refer to section 25.3.3.1 in section 25.2. I also think that the > discussion about frozen snapshots is ill advised. If I were doing it I > would use pg_start_backup before using any file system snapshot. > > Another thing we've talked about on this topic before (but never got around to doing all the way) is to re-order things so that the current 25.3 chapter comes before 25.2. And making sure we put the simple yet correct solutions like pg_basebackup first, and put complicated ones later. And we should really chance the title of what's now 25.2 to explicitly be called "offline file system backups" as well. //Magnus
