Cookbook recipe

Point-in-time recovery (PITR) with base backup + WAL

Applies to PostgreSQL 13–17 Last reviewed May 2026 Grounded in source

What This Is

A production experience capsule based on real incident patterns.

Why It Matters

Builds production judgment under pressure.

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Estimated investigation4 min

Scenario

Someone ran a bad DELETE at 14:32. With PITR you can restore the cluster to 14:31, just before the damage. Diagnose it Confirm you have archiving in place: SHOW archive_mode; SHOW archive_command; -- must copy WAL…

Investigation Path

Someone ran a bad DELETE at 14:32. With PITR you can restore the cluster to 14:31, just before the damage.

Diagnose it

Confirm you have archiving in place:

SHOW archive_mode;
SHOW archive_command;  -- must copy WAL somewhere durable

Why it happens

PITR combines a physical base backup with the continuous stream of archived WAL. You restore the base backup, then replay WAL up to a chosen target time/LSN.

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