Configures the WAL-E backup tool for Postgres.

This allows you to quickly recover your database from an S3 bucket.

Force the WAL archives to swap, so that you can ensure that your backup works.

SELECT pg_switch_xlog();

Suppose you've corrupted or deleted your postgres data directory:

1. stop the database: sudo service postgresql stop.
2. delete everything from the postgres data directory: sudo rm -rf /mnt/postgresql/*
3. look in recovery.example, there's a command here for downloading a base backup of the database.
4. copy recovery.example to recovery.conf. this file directs postgres to perform recovery.
5. start the database server: sudo service postgresql start

This should almost never happen, and is a risky operation.

if you ever find yourself in a sticky situation where you are unable to recover fully with WAL-E, and you have a partial backup of your data directory. You have the nuclear option of resetting your log directory.

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.3/bin/pg_resetxlog /mnt/postgresql/