Glen Parker <glenebob@nwlink.com> writes:
> I guess the best question I can see is, under what circumstances is the
> directory name in pg_tablespace actually used?
It isn't used (except by pg_dumpall) ... what counts is where the
symlink in $PGDATA/pg_tblspc points.
> I have a scenario where I want to restore from a PITR backup, into an
> alternate location on the same machine it came from, while the original
> database is still up and running. I have one alternate table space.
You can probably make this work if you don't issue any CREATE TABLESPACE
commands while PITR logging is active, but you'll want to test your
procedures pretty carefully.
regards, tom lane