Re: XLogArchivingActive

Andreas Pflug <pgadmin@pse-consulting.de> writes:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>> This is silly.  Why not just turn archiving on and off?

> Not quite. I want online backup, but no archiving. Currently, I have to 
> edit postgresql.conf and SIGHUP to "turn on archiving" configuring a 
> (hopefully) writable directory, do the backup, edit postgresql.conf and 
> SIGHUP again. Not too convenient...

You don't get to count the edit/SIGHUP steps, because those would be the
same for any other GUC.

AFAICS you could get the effect by setting up an archive_command scriptsleep 100exit 1
so that the archiver will do nothing.

BTW, I don't actually understand why you want this at all.  If you're
not going to keep a continuing series of WAL files, you don't have any
PITR capability.  What you're proposing seems like a bulky, unportable,
hard-to-use equivalent of pg_dump.  Why not use pg_dump?
        regards, tom lane