Re: Are file system level differential/incremental backups possible?

On October 12, 2011 03:04:30 PM Bob Hatfield wrote:
> > Anyway, a better way for you would be to do a regular backup (with
> > pg_start_backup, copy and pg_stop_backup) and then use wal
> > archive_command to keep the xlogs between 2 full backups.
>
> Thanks Julien.  Can pg_start/stop_backup() be used for regular full
> file system backups?   All of the documentation I've read only refers
> to using those for warm standby/wal shipping methods.

The base backup necessary to initialize a warm standby server is a full file
system backup of the database, which can also be used for restores to any
point in time after the base backup is completed, assuming you also have all
the archived WAL files.