Re: pg_basebackup for streaming base backups

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 9:37 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net> wrote:
>> Great. Thanks for the quick update!
>>
>> Here are another comments:

Here are comments against the documents. The other code looks good.

It's helpful to document what to set to allow pg_basebackup connection.
That is not only the REPLICATION privilege but also max_wal_senders and
pg_hba.conf.

+ <refsect1>
+ <title>Options</title>

Can we list the descriptions of option in the same order as
"pg_basebackup --help" does?

It's helpful to document that the target directory must be specified and
it must be empty.

+ <para>
+ The backup will include all files in the data directory and tablespaces,
+ including the configuration files and any additional files placed in the
+ directory by third parties. Only regular files and directories are allowed
+ in the data directory, no symbolic links or special device files.

The latter sentence means that the backup of the database cluster
created by initdb -X is not supported? Because the symlink to the
actual WAL directory is included in it.

OTOH, I found the following source code comments:

+ * Receive a tar format stream from the connection to the server, and unpack
+ * the contents of it into a directory. Only files, directories and
+ * symlinks are supported, no other kinds of special files.

This says that symlinks are supported. Which is true? Is the symlink
supported only in tar format?

Regards,

--
Fujii Masao
NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION
NTT Open Source Software Center