pg_archivecleanup - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

pg_archivecleanup - clean up PostgreSQL WAL archive files

SYNOPSIS

pg_archivecleanup [option...] archivelocation oldestkeptwalfile

DESCRIPTION

pg_archivecleanup is designed to be used as an archive_cleanup_command to clean up WAL
file archives when running as a standby server (see Section 25.2, “Log-Shipping Standby
Servers”, in the documentation). pg_archivecleanup can also be used as a standalone
program to clean WAL file archives.

To configure a standby server to use pg_archivecleanup, put this into its recovery.conf
configuration file:

archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup archivelocation %r'

where archivelocation is the directory from which WAL segment files should be removed.

When used within archive_cleanup_command, all WAL files logically preceding the value of
the %r argument will be removed from archivelocation. This minimizes the number of files
that need to be retained, while preserving crash-restart capability. Use of this parameter
is appropriate if the archivelocation is a transient staging area for this particular
standby server, but not when the archivelocation is intended as a long-term WAL archive
area, or when multiple standby servers are recovering from the same archive location.

When used as a standalone program all WAL files logically preceding the oldestkeptwalfile
will be removed from archivelocation. In this mode, if you specify a .partial or .backup
file name, then only the file prefix will be used as the oldestkeptwalfile. This treatment
of .backup file name allows you to remove all WAL files archived prior to a specific base
backup without error. For example, the following example will remove all files older than
WAL file name 000000010000003700000010:

pg_archivecleanup -d archive 000000010000003700000010.00000020.backup

pg_archivecleanup: keep WAL file "archive/000000010000003700000010" and later
pg_archivecleanup: removing file "archive/00000001000000370000000F"
pg_archivecleanup: removing file "archive/00000001000000370000000E"

pg_archivecleanup assumes that archivelocation is a directory readable and writable by the
server-owning user.

OPTIONS

pg_archivecleanup accepts the following command-line arguments:

-d
Print lots of debug logging output on stderr.

-n
Print the names of the files that would have been removed on stdout (performs a dry
run).

-V
--version
Print the pg_archivecleanup version and exit.

-x extension
When using the program as a standalone utility, provide an extension that will be
stripped from all file names before deciding if they should be deleted. This is
typically useful for cleaning up archives that have been compressed during storage,
and therefore have had an extension added by the compression program. For example: -x
.gz.

-?
--help
Show help about pg_archivecleanup command line arguments, and exit.

NOTES

pg_archivecleanup is designed to work with PostgreSQL 8.0 and later when used as a
standalone utility, or with PostgreSQL 9.0 and later when used as an archive cleanup
command.

pg_archivecleanup is written in C and has an easy-to-modify source code, with specifically
designated sections to modify for your own needs

EXAMPLES

On Linux or Unix systems, you might use:

archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup -d /mnt/standby/archive %r 2>>cleanup.log'

where the archive directory is physically located on the standby server, so that the
archive_command is accessing it across NFS, but the files are local to the standby. This
will:

· produce debugging output in cleanup.log

· remove no-longer-needed files from the archive directory

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