On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 06:22:46PM +0530, Gurjeet Singh wrote:
> I don't know if the following would be recommended, but did some research
> and it seems that one can use STOP and CONT signals on Linux/Unix to
> pause/continue a process.
As David noted; sending a STOP is exactly what your shell does for you
when you hit the Ctrl+Z key combination. It'll subsequently send a CONT
when you put it into the background (by typing "bg") or resume it in the
foreground (when using "fg").
Note that when used on the pg_dump process all you're doing is stopping
it from writing out the backup. The server process will still be
running and waiting for the backup to finish writing the data. It will
thus hold the transaction open and any other state needed to keep things
going. This should be fine for temporary pauses, but it wouldn't be
recommended to pause the backup for days at a time.
--
Sam http://samason.me.uk/