PG-WAL-E

Configures the WAL-E backup tool for Postgres.

This allows you to quickly recover your database from an S3 bucket.

Useful Commands

I want to test my archive command

Force the WAL archives to swap, so that you can ensure that your backup works.

SELECT pg_switch_xlog();

database recovery

Suppose you've corrupted or deleted your postgres data directory:

1. stop the database: sudo service postgresql stop.
2. delete the postgres data directory.
3. look in recovery.example, there's a command here for downloading a base backup of the database.
4. copy recovery.example to recovery.conf. this file directs postgres to perform recovery.
5. start the database server: sudo service postgresql start

pg_xlog is corrupt, help!

This should almost never happen, and is a risky operation.

if you ever find yourself in a sticky situation where you are unable to recover fully with WAL-E, and you have a partial backup of your data directory. You have the nuclear option of resetting your log directory.

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.3/bin/pg_resetxlog /mnt/postgresql/