title: How can I tell if barman is receiving the WAL stream during the day?
body: <p>I followed the directions in <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-back-up-restore-and-migrate-postgresql-databases-with-barman-on-centos-7" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this</a> and <a href="http://docs.pgbarman.org/release/2.2/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this</a>.  I've also successfully backed up from one server and restored it to another server. My barman is on a dedicated machine.  Looking good. But how can I tell if it's receiving the WAL stream during the day?  </p>
  
  <p>I can see the base backups in [barman-server]:/var/lib/barman</p>
  
  <p><code>barman check mydb</code> is reporting good things</p>
  
  <pre><code>[root@barman barman]# barman check mydb
  Server mydb:
      PostgreSQL: OK
      is_superuser: OK
      PostgreSQL streaming: OK
      wal_level: OK
      replication slot: OK
      directories: OK
      retention policy settings: OK
      backup maximum age: OK (interval provided: 7 days, latest backup age: 24 minutes)
      compression settings: OK
      failed backups: OK (there are 0 failed backups)
      minimum redundancy requirements: OK (have 3 backups, expected at least 0)
      pg_basebackup: OK
      pg_basebackup compatible: OK
      pg_basebackup supports tablespaces mapping: OK
      pg_receivexlog: OK
      pg_receivexlog compatible: OK
      receive-wal running: OK
      archiver errors: OK
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have made a cron entry to run the <code>barman backup mydb</code> command (I think it makes more base backups)</p>
  
  <pre><code>[root@barman ~]# cat /etc/cron.d/do_backups 
  30 23 * * * /usr/bin/barman backup mydb
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pgbarman/b9GFSb7fqVQ" rel="nofollow noreferrer">I share this guy's opinion</a> that this doesn't belong in a separate cron job -- it belongs in the /etc/barman.d/.conf files as some kind of setting that says "Take a Base-Backup every X days" or some such, but that's not my problem in this question.</p>
  
  <p><strong>How do I tell if this is receiving the WAL stream intra-day?</strong>  </p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>What do I look for to see some progress?</li>
  <li>Is there a way to see the IP address or a database connection for this so I know for sure? </li>
  <li>(I think I need a little education on WAL streams as well) Are WAL streams something that the PG server "sends" to barman? or is it "pulled" from a process on the barman?</li>
  </ul>