PG_ARCHIVECLEANUP(1) PostgreSQL 18.6 Documentation PG_ARCHIVECLEANUP(1) NAME pg_archivecleanup - clean up PostgreSQL WAL archive files SYNOPSIS pg_archivecleanup [option...] archivelocation oldestkeptwalfile DESCRIPTION pg_archivecleanup is designed to be used as an archive_cleanup_command to clean up WAL file archives when running as a standby server (see Sec- tion 26.2). pg_archivecleanup can also be used as a standalone program to clean WAL file archives. To configure a standby server to use pg_archivecleanup, put this into its postgresql.conf configuration file: archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup archivelocation %r' where archivelocation is the directory from which WAL segment files should be removed. When used within archive_cleanup_command, all WAL files logically preceding the value of the %r argument will be removed from archivelocation. This minimizes the number of files that need to be retained, while preserving crash-restart capability. Use of this parameter is appropriate if the archivelocation is a transient staging area for this particular standby server, but not when the archivelocation is intended as a long-term WAL archive area, or when multiple standby servers are recovering from the same archive location. When used as a standalone program all WAL files logically preceding the oldestkeptwalfile will be removed from archivelocation. In this mode, if you specify a .partial or .backup file name, then only the file prefix will be used as the oldestkeptwalfile. This treatment of .backup file name al- lows you to remove all WAL files archived prior to a specific base backup without error. For example, the following example will remove all files older than WAL file name 000000010000003700000010: pg_archivecleanup -d archive 000000010000003700000010.00000020.backup pg_archivecleanup: keep WAL file "archive/000000010000003700000010" and later pg_archivecleanup: removing file "archive/00000001000000370000000F" pg_archivecleanup: removing file "archive/00000001000000370000000E" pg_archivecleanup assumes that archivelocation is a directory readable and writable by the server-owning user. OPTIONS pg_archivecleanup accepts the following command-line arguments: -b --clean-backup-history Remove backup history files as well. See Section 25.3.2 for details about backup history files. -d --debug Print lots of debug logging output on stderr. -n --dry-run Print the names of the files that would have been removed on stdout (performs a dry run). -V --version Print the pg_archivecleanup version and exit. -x extension --strip-extension=extension Provide an extension that will be stripped from all file names before deciding if they should be deleted. This is typically useful for clean- ing up archives that have been compressed during storage, and therefore have had an extension added by the compression program. For example: -x .gz. -? --help Show help about pg_archivecleanup command line arguments, and exit. ENVIRONMENT The environment variable PG_COLOR specifies whether to use color in diag- nostic messages. Possible values are always, auto and never. NOTES pg_archivecleanup is designed to work with PostgreSQL 8.0 and later when used as a standalone utility, or with PostgreSQL 9.0 and later when used as an archive cleanup command. pg_archivecleanup is written in C and has an easy-to-modify source code, with specifically designated sections to modify for your own needs EXAMPLES On Linux or Unix systems, you might use: archive_cleanup_command = 'pg_archivecleanup -d /mnt/standby/archive %r 2>>cleanup.log' where the archive directory is physically located on the standby server, so that the archive_command is accessing it across NFS, but the files are lo- cal to the standby. This will: * produce debugging output in cleanup.log * remove no-longer-needed files from the archive directory PostgreSQL 18.6 2026 PG_ARCHIVECLEANUP(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | ENVIRONMENT | NOTES | EXAMPLES
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