Massive insert created 975 WAL segments.. what?

[Wells Oliver]

We were doing a test and inserted 1.5 million rows. In doing so, postgres
created 974 WAL segments of 16MB apiece. The relevant configuration from my
master's postgresql.conf:

wal_level = hot_standby
archive_mode = on
archive_command = 'test ! -f /mnt/postgresql-logs/%f && cp %p
/mnt/postgresql-logs/%f'
max_wal_senders = 3
wal_keep_segments = 16

So, now I have 16GB of WAL segments, 974 of them. Will postgresql clean
this up? Will it remove these files? Will it create more with big inserts?

What is the best way to manage this?

[Ray Stell]

So, now I have 16GB of WAL segments, 974 of them. Will postgresql clean this up? Will it remove these files? Will it create more with big inserts?
What is the best way to manage this?

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/pgarchivecleanup.html

you can use this in conjunction with your backup facility/scipts. Don't want to clean them up until you have a backup, right?

[Simon Riggs]

Post by Wells Oliver
We were doing a test and inserted 1.5 million rows. In doing so, postgres
created 974 WAL segments of 16MB apiece. The relevant configuration from my
wal_level = hot_standby
archive_mode = on
archive_command = 'test ! -f /mnt/postgresql-logs/%f && cp %p
/mnt/postgresql-logs/%f'
max_wal_senders = 3
wal_keep_segments = 16
So, now I have 16GB of WAL segments, 974 of them. Will postgresql clean this
up? Will it remove these files? Will it create more with big inserts?
What is the best way to manage this?

These are transaction log files, created by database writes. They
protect you if you crash and also allow replication/backup.

These will be rotated every checkpoint, which by default is 5 minutes.
So they'll be long gone by now.