PostgreSQL 12 High Availability Cookbook - Third Edition

Removing old files

Of course, we might not need to retain transaction logs forever. WAL-E also provides a simple command for purging old WAL files that have served their purpose. We're mainly concerned with high availability, so being able to restore from a backup taken several weeks ago probably isn't necessary. We can use a command like this to remove these old files:

envdir ~postgres/env wal-e delete --confirm retain 2 

This would remove all but WAL files for the two most recent backup operations. The --confirm flag commits the change; otherwise, WAL-E errs on the side of caution and considers the command a dry run.

Unfortunately, this only really works if we have performed a backup with WAL-E. If our database is too large for this to ...