Disk layout for PostgreSQL
Since PostgreSQL uses standard filesystems for all its files, there are several parts of the database you can relocate to somewhere else just by moving the associated files and adding a symbolic link to the new location.
Symbolic links
Symbolic links (also called a symlink) are just entries in a filesystem directory that point towards another location. UNIX systems originally preferred to use what are called hard links, which link to the new location quite directly. The entry in the filesystem literally points to another spot on disk. To make this easier to manage, the normal approach now is to use soft symlinks, which are easily visible. The most common thing to relocate using a symlink in PostgreSQL is the WAL transaction ...
Get PostgreSQL 9.0 High Performance now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.