This one time, at band camp, Germán C. Basisty wrote:
>Hi!
>
>I have Amanda server running on a Linux box. In another machine, I have
>Solaris 9 running Amanda client and PostgreSQL. I would like to know if
>someone has experience backupping PostgreSQL with Amanda.
>
>I have thought the following solutions:
>
>       1. Making a file system level backup. The problem is that I'll have
>to stop the PostgreSQL engine first, so the DB will be unoperative for a
>while.
>       2. To use pg_dump to get a hot snapshot of the desired DB, put it on
>some directory and then backup that directory with amanda.

I do this, and cross my fingers that the pg_dumpall is done before the
amanda run.

>I saw somewhere a kind of script that interacts between Oracle and Amanda,
>and it is possible to backup the desired DB without stopping the engine. Is
>there something like that for postgreSQL??

So I had a crazy idea that hasn't yet been implemented, a pg dumper similar
in appearance to GNUTAR and DUMP on the client machine.  Your DLE would look
somethign like:

host database/table pg

where pg would be the dumptype telling amanda to use the pg dumper.

The net effect is that you'd get a hot snapshot written straight to amanda,
so you wouldn't have to worry about scheduling the dumps of each at the
right time.

If someone wants to beat me to the implementation though, please go right
ahead :-)