On 3/30/20 5:08 PM, Andres Freund wrote:
The data in the backup label isn't sufficient though. Without having parsed the timeline file there's no way to verify that the correct WAL is present. I guess we can also add client side tools to parse timelines, add command the fetch all of the required files, and then interpret that somehow. But that seems much more complicated. Imo it makes sense to want to be able verify that WAL looks correct even transporting WAL using another method (say archiving) and thus using pg_basebackup's -Xnone. For the manifest to actually list what's required for the base backup doesn't seem redundant to me. Imo it makes the manifest file make a good bit more sense, since afterwards it actually describes the whole base backup.
FWIW, pgBackRest stores the backup WAL stop/start in the manifest. To get this information after the backup is complete requires parsing the .backup file which doesn't get stored in the backup directory by pg_basebackup. As far as I know, this is only accessibly to solutions that implement archive_command. So, pgBackRest could do that but it seems far more trouble than it is worth.
Regards, -- -David da...@pgmasters.net
