"Albe Laurenz" <laurenz.albe@wien.gv.at> writes:
> Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
>> Well, the documentation states the reason to do that:
>>
>> This is an important safety feature to preserve the
>> integrity of your archive in case of administrator error
>> (such as sending the output of two different servers to the
>> same archive directory)
> But isn't it true that the vast majority of people have only one
> PostgreSQL cluster per machine, and it is highly unlikely that
> somebody else creates a file with the same name as a WAL segment
> in the archive directory?
That's not the point. You'd typically be sending the WAL archive to
another machine (via NFS or FTP or whatever), and it's not very hard at
all to imagine accidentally setting up two different machines to point
at the same archive directory on the same backup server. For instance,
imagine that you're cloning your DB in preparation for an upgrade.
You'll probably start by copying your configuration file...
regards, tom lane