Need For Speed Series Archives
Need For Speed Series Archives
Official Site of The State of New Jersey
NJAC 15:3-1.2 Definitions
The words and phrases used in this chapter shall have the meanings as defined in ARMA A4759 (2007), Glossary of Records and Information Management Terms; ANSI/AIIM TR2-1998, Glossary of Document Technologies; and SAA 460 (2005), A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology, as amended and supplemented, incorporated herein by reference, except the following words and phrases, which shall have the designated meanings, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise:
"Accession" means:
1. The transfer of the legal and physical custody of permanent records from an agency to the State Archives or other archives;
2. The records, also called "accessioned records," so transferred; or
3. The physical and recordkeeping process involved in transferring legal and physical custody of such records.
"Agency" or "agencies" means:
1. Generally, an organization that provides some service, a body having the authority to represent another or others, a government bureau or administrative division, or the place of business of the same; or
2. Specifically, any, or all, or any combination of the following public agency or agencies, as defined herein, currently or previously existing or to be established, depending on the context:
i. The Office of the Governor and any of the departments of the Executive Branch of State government, and any division, board, bureau, office, commission, institution, or other instrumentality within or created by such department;
ii. The Legislature of the State, and any office, board, bureau, committee, or commission within or created by the Legislative Branch;
iii. Any independent State authority, commission, district, institution, or instrumentality;
iv. Any political subdivision of the State;
v. Any department, division, board, bureau, office, commission, district, or institution, or other instrumentality within or created by a political subdivision of the State or combination of political subdivisions;
vi. Any school, fire, or water district or other district or districts;
vii. Any independent authority, commission, district, institution, or instrumentality;
viii. Any agency or institution created by a political subdivision, district or other independent authority, or combinations thereof;
ix. Any subordinate office or agency of i through viii above;
x. Any office, officer, official, board, or governing body of i through ix above; or
xi. Any combinations of i through x above.
"Active records or files" means:
any group of public records maintained in the office of a public agency for conducting daily operations and which is referenced at least once per month.
"Archival records" means:
1. Records which have a permanent or enduring administrative, legal, fiscal, research or historical value, and in consequence thereof should be retained and preserved in perpetuity, and which are noncurrent and are not required to be retained in the office which they originated; or
2. Records found by the Division to contain significant information about the government and history of this State that are therefore worthy of long-term preservation and systematic management for historical and other research. (See definitions of "record.")
"Archives" means:
1. An organization or agency responsible for appraising, accessioning, preserving, and making available permanent records, which in the State of New Jersey is the New Jersey State Archives, otherwise known as the "State Archives," "Bureau of Archives," or "Bureau of Archives and History," established under N.J.S.A. 47:3-16;
2. The noncurrent records of an organization preserved because of their continuing or enduring value and which have been determined to have sufficient historical value to warrant their continued preservation and have been transferred to the legal custody of such an agency; or
3. One or more buildings, or portions thereof, established and maintained for the preservation, management, administration, and use of such permanent records.
"Automated records system" means:
any system that applies computer technology in the creation, collection, indexing, processing, management, maintenance, retrieval, use, storage, dissemination, and disposition of public records.
"Automated records management system" means:
any system specifically designed and used to apply computer technology to automate the operation of a records management program, including records storage and retrieval, cost accounting, retention schedules, and records disposition.
"Commercial purpose" means:
the use of information contained in a public record for the purpose of sale or resale of such information or for the purpose of producing a document containing all or part of copies, printouts, photographs, microforms, duplicate tapes, disks, and other alternate media for sale, or the obtaining of names and addresses from such public records for the purpose of solicitation or the sale of such names and addresses to another for the purpose of solicitation or for any purpose in which the purchaser can reasonably anticipate the receipt of monetary gain from the direct use of such public record; but does not mean the use of a public record as evidence or as research or evidence in an action in a judicial or quasi-judicial body of this State or a political subdivision of this State.
"Confidential record" means:
a public record that contains personal data or other sensitive information to which access is restricted. (See also the definition of "record.")
"Correspondence" means:
records needed for the conduct of the current operations of an agency, and are, therefore, generally located and maintained in an office space and office equipment. (See also the definition of "record.")
"Current records" means:
records needed for the conduct of the current operations of an agency, and are, therefore, generally located and maintained in an office space and office equipment. (See also the definition of "record.")
"Current year" means:
1. The period of a year (365 days or 366 days for a leap year); or
2. In the case of a retention schedule, the period of a year following the date on which a record had been created, received or filed.
"Custodian of public records" or "custodian" means:
1. The head of a public agency having custody or control of public records or his or her designee who is responsible for the creation or receipt, custody, and maintenance of public records;
2. As established under N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1.1 et seq., the officer designated by formal action of that agency's director or governing body, as the case may be; or
3. In the case of a municipality, the municipal clerk.
"Custody" means:
guardianship or control of records, including both physical possession (physical custody)and legal responsibility (legal custody) unless one or the other is specified.
"Data" means:
1. Facts, statistics, pieces of information, or body of information, either historical or derived from calculation or information gathering activities, relating to a particular subject of interest to an agency, which are collected, created, and recorded for the production of records and information;
2. Symbols, numbers, or other representations of facts or ideas that can be communicated, interpreted, or processed by manual or automated means, often associated with electronic data or statistics and measurements; or
3. A general term used to describe raw facts and figures which may be manipulated and from which conclusions may be inferred.
"Data archive" or "data archives" means:
a facility established and maintained for the preservation, management, administration, and use of records and information of permanent and enduring value recorded or stored on electronic media.
"Data processing" means:
the systematic performance of a series of actions with data, by manual, mechanical, electromechanical, or electronic means, but primarily used to mean electronic data processing (EDP), which is the processing and management of data using electronic digital computers.
"Directives" means:
a formal managerial communication establishing policy and procedures of an agency.
"Director" means:
the head of the Division of Archives and Records Management in the Department of State as established under the Governor's Reorganization Plan, filed April 25, 1983. (See the definition of "Division of Archives and Records Management.") The Director of the Division of Archives and Records Management acts as Secretary to the State Records Committee is responsible for the proper recording or its proceedings.
"Disaster planning" or "disaster response and recovery program" means:
1. Generally, a set of policies and procedures for implementation in the event of a sudden, unplanned calamitous event that creates an inability of an agency to perform critical operational functions for some period of time;
2. A plan consisting of a disaster recovery plan, information about disaster preparedness, procedures during a disaster in progress, and plans for disaster recovery; or
3. Specifically, pursuant to the provisions of N.J.A.C. 15:3-2.5, Vital Records Program, measures taken to prevent damage, loss or destruction of public records in the event of a disaster and methods of recovery and restoration of damaged records.
“Disposable records" means:
records which have a temporary value and, in consequence, may be destroyed after the lapse of a specified time or after the occurrence of some action which renders them valueless per record retention schedules established by the State Records Committee. (See also the definition of "record.")
"Disposal" means:
the final disposition of public records that have a temporary value, and that may therefore be destroyed after the expiration of a retention period fixed by the State Records Committee, and upon receiving the written approval of the State Records Committee.
"Division" means:
1. The Division of Archives and Records Management in the Department of State, as established Governor's Reorganization Plan, filed April 25, 1983 and as set out under N.J.S.A. 18A:73-26, whose primary responsibilities include the implementation and enforcement of the provisions of N.J.S.A. Title 47 (Public Records) et al.;
2. Pursuant to P.L. 1994, c.140, § 10 (N.J.S.A. 47:1-15), whenever in any law, rule, regulation, order, contract, document, judicial or administrative proceeding, or otherwise, reference is made to the Bureau of Archives and History in the Department of Education or the administrator thereof, the same shall be considered to mean and refer to the Division of Archives and Records Management in the Department of State, established pursuant to the Governor's Reorganization Plan, filed April 25, 1983; and
3. The successor to the Public Records Office established under P.L. 1920, c.46, as amended by P.L. 1924, c.203 (N.J.S.A. 47:2-1 through 8).
“Electronic record" or "electronic records" means:
any record whose informational content is in code and has been recorded on computer-related media such as punched paper cards or tapes, magnetic tape or disks, optical disks, or other electronic media, from which coded information is retrievable only by a machine. (See also the definition of "record.")
"File" or "files" means, depending on the context:
1. An accumulation of records and nonrecord material arranged and maintained according to a plan;
2. A unit, such as a folder, microform, electronic form, containing such records or nonrecord material;
3. Storage equipment, such as a filing cabinet; or
4. A collective term, usually applied to all records and nonrecord material of an office or agency.
"File management" means:
the combination of technological and human resources for the effective and efficient storage, use, maintenance and disposal of records maintained and managed in filing systems.
"Form" or "forms" means:
a document or record in paper or electronic form that contains predetermined spaces for the insertion of data.
"Forms analysis and design" means:
1. The study of forms in relation to operating procedures to determine the most effective and efficient collection and processing of data;
2. The specification of the physical components of a form, including but not limited to, layout of information blocks or fields, type sizes and styles, color, weight, and all components; or
3. Specifically, the process often associated with the development of forms to correspond with computer screens used for the entry of data and information to effect more effective and efficient data entry.
"Forms management" means:
the process through which forms are analyzed for current and future use, designed for effective and efficient entry of data and information, and controlled for efficient storage, revision and printing, which assures that unneeded forms are eliminated, and that needed forms are designed, produced and distributed economically and efficiently.
"Imaging" means:
the production of representations of two-dimensional images of documents or other objects from digitally generated data or scanners and other means of data capture, or the recording of such images on microforms, videotape, optical disk or other data storage media.
"Imaging facility" means:
an establishment maintained for converting, copying, duplicating, recording and printing record image facsimiles on various storage media, and for providing for the identification, indexing, and processing of such record image facsimiles.
"Image processing" means:
1. Generally, the computer-related discipline wherein analog or digital images are the main data object, or the manipulation and control of data representing two-dimensional images, including raster images generated by scanning and raster conversions of electronic data created in other formats, vector-based data from computer-aided design (CAD) and other illustration systems, and digital images from digital, video and other camera systems; or
2. Specifically, the creation, preparation, capture, recording, indexing, storage, retrieval, reproduction, control, use and management of direct representations or images of documents using these techniques.
"Inactive records" means:
records that are not needed for the conduct of current operations and are not required to be retained in the office in which they originate. (See also the definition of "record.")
"Information resource management" means:
the systematic management and treatment of an organization's data, records, and information as common and valuable resources. Information resource management encompasses records management and image processing.
"Inventory" means:
1. A survey of agency records and nonrecord materials conducted primarily for the development of retention schedules or to identify records management problems, such as inadequate applications of recordkeeping technologies;
2. The documented results of such a survey; or
3. A type of finding aid used in archives administration for accessioning permanent records.
"Life cycle of records" means:
the records management concept that records normally pass through successive stages from creation or receipt of a record through its useful life to its final disposition, usually identified as five phases in the life span of a record, including the creation stage, distribution and use stage, storage and maintenance stage, retention and disposition stage, and archival preservation stage.
"Life expectancy" or "LE rating" means:
1. The estimated length of time a recording medium should remain viable for storage, retrieval, and preservation of the records or information it contains;
2. A rating system for various types of recording media which has replaced the use of the former general term "archival" for any such media as archival microfilm or archival paper;
3. The life expectancy (LE) rating of any recording medium used for public records, corresponding to the retention period of such records, unless otherwise provided for under the standards, rules and guidelines promulgated by the State Records Committee; and
4. Any manufacturer's claims for the continuing viability of a recording medium, including life expectancy for prerecorded media as well as recorded media, which should be substantiated by detailed specifications for test parameters.
"Local agency" means: the following, currently or previously existing or to be established:
1. Any city, municipality, township, county or other political subdivision created by the State;
2. Any department, division, board, bureau, office, commission, institution, or other instrumentality within or created by a political subdivision or combination of political subdivisions;
3. Any school, fire, or water district or other district or districts;
4. Any independent local authority, commission, institution, or instrumentality;
5. Any subordinate office or agency of 1 through 4 above;
6. Any office, officer, official, board, or governing body of 1 through 5 above; or
7. Any combinations of 1 through 6.
"Local governing body" means:
the county board of freeholders; city, township, borough, town or village council, committee, board, commission, district, or other body authorized by law to govern the affairs of a local government.
"Local government" means:
the following, currently or previously existing or to be established:
1. Any county, city, town, municipality, or other government of a political subdivision, created by an act of the Legislature or the State;
2. Any school, fire, or water district or other district or districts;
3. Any independent local authority, commission, district, institution, or instrumentality;
4. Any subordinate office or agency of 1 through 3 above;
5. Any office, officer, official, board, or governing body of 1 through 4 above; or
6. Any combination of 1 through 5 above.
"Long-term record" or "long-term records" means:
a record or series of records required by a Federal or State statute or regulation, or by a retention schedule approved by the State Records Committee, to be retained by the originating agency for more than 10 years after creation, filing, or completion, unless otherwise specified in standards, rules or regulations promulgated by the State Records Committee per P.L. 1953, c.410, § 6 (N.J.S. 47:3-20). (See also the definition of "record.")
"Machine-readable records" means:
any record whose informational content is in code and has been recorded on media such as punched paper cards or paper tapes, magnetic tape or disks, optical disks, or other electronic media from which coded information is retrievable only by a machine. (See also the definition of "electronic record.")
"Media maintenance plan" means:
a combination of policies, procedures and standards for the secure storage, protection and preservation of paper and alternative media.
"Medium" or "media" means:
the physical form of records or recorded information, including paper, film, magnetic disks and tape, optical disks, and other material on which records and information can be recorded.
"Medium-term record" means:
any public record with a retention period of more than three years but less than 10 years after creation, filing or completion, unless otherwise specified in standards, rules or regulations promulgated by the State Records Committee. (See also the definition of "record.")
"Micrographics" means:
1. The process of creating photographic reproductions greatly reduced in size from the original on fine grain, high resolution film, usually of a document or some other type of record; or
2. The archival and records management technologies and techniques concerned with microimaging and reprographics, including producing, using and preserving microforms.
"Microform" or "microforms" means:
any form containing greatly reduced images or microimages, using photographic technologies, including microfilm on reels, cassettes, and cartridges; microfiche; microfilm jackets; aperture cards; microcards and micro-opaques.
"Microimaging systems" means:
systems including microforms and electronic record systems, including stand-alone micrographic systems, computer-assisted retrieval (CAR) systems, computer-output microfilm (COM) systems, computer- input microfilm (CIM) systems, digitally produced microfilm, and electronic microimage transmission systems.
"Migration" means:
the process or result of moving data from one electronic record system to another.
"Multifunction device" (MFD) means a multi-function printer/product/peripheral, or multifunctional, all-in-one, mopier (multiple optical copier), or other office machine, which incorporates the functionality of multiple types of office equipment in one device, so as to have a smaller footprint in a home or small business setting or to provide centralized document management/distribution/production in an office. A typical multifunction device may act as a printer, photocopier, fax, scanner and/or telephone or a combination of these devices. Input to multifunction devices is, by their nature, multimodal. Documents may be sent via Ethernet, parallel port or other digital interface from a computer, arrive by fax over the telephone line, or be scanned in locally by the user. Some multifunctional devices include editing and publication capabilities and/or digital media readers, such as media card readers.
"Municipality" means, per N.J.S. 47:1-2:
any municipal corporation, including cities, towns, townships, villages and boroughs, and any municipality governed by a board of commissioners or an improvement commission.
"Noncurrent records" means:
1. Records that are not needed for the conduct of current operations and are not required to be retained in the office in which they originate (see the definition of "record"); or
2. Records stored in a records storage facility that are not needed for the conduct of current operations and are not required to be retained in the office in which they originate. (See the definitions of "records center" or "records storage facility.")
"Off-site storage" means:
a storage facility with environmental and physical controls for the secure storage and retrieval of paper documents, duplicate microfilm, optical, magnetic and other alternate storage media for the recovery and reinstitution of records and information systems in the aftermath of partial or total system failures. (See also the definitions of "records center" or "records storage facility.")
"Permanent records" means:
1. Records which have a permanent or enduring administrative, legal, fiscal, research or historical value and, in consequence thereof, must be retained and preserved indefinitely by the originating agency or transferred to an archives; or
2. Records which have a permanent or enduring administrative, legal, fiscal, research or historical value and, in consequence thereof, are retained and preserved indefinitely by the State Archives.
"Political subdivision" means and includes:
any city, municipality, township, county district, authority, or other public corporation, instrumentality or entity created by the State, mandated by constitution, or created by an act of the Legislature.
"Public record" or "public records" (see the definition of "record").
"Public administrative building" means:
any permanent structure or portion thereof, wholly, or partly enclosed, which is intended to provide offices, courtrooms, workrooms, laboratories, hearing rooms, meeting rooms and auditoriums, which are intended for the use or accommodation of public agencies or the general public for any category or classification thereof in connection with the furtherance of public law or policy necessarily or incidentally requiring the provision of such accommodations or facilities, together with all its grounds and appurtenant structures and facilities.
"Record" or "records" means:
pursuant to P.L. 1953, c.410, § 2 as amended by P.L. 1994, c.140, § 3 (N.J.S.A 47:3-16), any paper, written or printed book, document or drawing, map or plan, photograph, microfilm, data processed or image processed document, sound-recording or similar device, or any copy thereof which has been made or is required by law to be received for filing, indexing, or reproducing by any officer, commission, agency or authority of the State or of any political subdivision thereof, including subordinate boards thereof, or that has been received by any such officer, commission, agency or authority of the State or of any political subdivision thereof, including subordinate boards thereof, in connection with the transaction of public business and has been retained by such recipient or its successor as evidence of its activities or because of the information contained therein.
"Records center" or "records storage facility" means:
1. Generally, a facility established and maintained pursuant to the provision of N.J.A.C 15:3-6, Storage of Public Records, for economical and efficient storage and servicing of noncurrent records pending the expiration of their approved retention periods and their disposal or transfer to an archives; or an intermediate area where agencies send inactive material which is maintained in an accessible manner until the agency obtains authority for its disposal; and
2. Specifically, the State Records Center or other records storage facilities established under N.J.S. 47:2-7, pursuant to the provisions in the Governor's Reorganization Plan, filed April 25, 1983, and maintained for economical and efficient storage and servicing of noncurrent public records pending the expiration of their approved retention periods and planned disposal or transfer to the State Archives.
"Records Officer" or "Records Liaison Officer" means:
any person or persons designated by the head or the governing body of a State agency in the executive or legislative branches of State government or independent State authorities or commissions, or county, municipality, school districts, independent local authorities or commissions or other local agencies, according to the provisions of N.J.A.C. 15:3-1.5(a)3, whose responsibilities include the development and oversight of archives and records management programs of such agency.
"Recordkeeping requirements" means:
1. Generally, statements in statutes, regulations, or agency directives providing general and specific guidance on particular records to be created, received, or filed and maintained by an agency, including good recordkeeping practices; or
2. Specifically, since every public agency is legally obligated to create and maintain adequate and proper documentation of its organization, functions, transactions, and activities, the guidelines, policies and procedures established by an agency for recordkeeping for any activity, transaction, or record media or to distinguish records from nonrecord materials or public records from personal papers.
"Records management" means:
1. The systematic application of professional methodologies, practices and techniques for the effective, efficient and economical management, use, processing, protection, preservation, and disposition of records; or
2. The planning, managing, controlling, directing, organizing, training, promoting, and other managerial activities related to the creation, maintenance, use, and disposition of records to achieve adequate and proper documentation of State and local policies and transactions and effective, efficient and economical management, operation, and administration of public agencies.
"Records management system" or "records system" means:
the combination of technical and human resources and policies and procedures for records creation, collection, acquisition, filing, processing, storage, use, dissemination, maintenance, and disposition.
"Records series" means:
any group or groups of related records which are normally used and filed as a unit and which permit evaluation as a unit for disposition purposes.
"Register" means:
1. Generally, a book, list or record of items, acts, names, or events recorded and kept for reference, access, control, or planning purposes; or
2. Specifically, the centralized list or record maintained for systematic recording and retrieval of information regarding public records pertaining to the administration of the provisions of this title, including but not limited to identification of record series and the function, location, custodian, retention schedule, personal or confidential nature of such record series and related recordkeeping systems.
"Report" means a narrative, statistical, graphic, or other account of operations, conditions, plans, or projections that is recorded on any medium for submission by one person, office or agency to another.
"Reports management" means:
the systematic control and direction of the production, maintenance and distribution of reports, including establishment of drafting and review standards by an agency, physical format and control standards, and other management procedures.
"Retention schedule" means:
a list or other instrument describing public records and their minimum retention periods and planned disposition, approved by the State Records Committee, pursuant to N.J.S. 47:3-19 et seq.
"Records series" means:
any groups of related records which are normally used and filed as a unit and which permit evaluation as a unit for disposition purposes.
"Retention period" means:
the period of time that must elapse before the records are disposed of or transferred to an archive; specifically, in the case of State agencies, the State Archives.
"Semicurrent records" means:
1. Any records that are needed only infrequently for the conduct of current operations of an agency and are not required to be retained in the office in which they were created, received, or accumulated (see also the definitions of "record" and "noncurrent record"); or
2. Records stored in a records storage facility that are needed only infrequently for the conduct of current operations and are not required to be retained in the office in which they originate. (See the definitions of "records center" or "records storage facility.")
"Short-term record" means:
any public record with a retention period of three years or less after creation, filing or completion, unless otherwise specified in standards, rules or regulations promulgated by the State Records Committee. (See also the definition of "record.")
"State agency" means:
the following, currently or previously existing or to be established:
1. The Office of the Governor and any of the departments in the Executive Branch of State government;
2. Any division, board, bureau, office, commission, council, authority, institution, office or officers or other instrumentality within or created by the departments in 1 above;
3. The Legislature of the State and any office, board, bureau or commission within or created by the Legislative Branch of the State government;
4. Any independent State authority, commission, district, institution, or instrumentality or agency;
5. Any subordinate office or agency of 1 through 4 above;
6. Any office, officer, official, board, or governing body of 1 through 5 above; or
7. Any combination of 1 through 6 above.
"State Archives" means:
the "New Jersey State Archives" or "Office of Archives and History,"pursuant to P.L. 1994, c.140, § 10 (N.J.S.A. 47:1-15), an establishment maintained by the Division of Archives and Records Management in the Department of State as established under the Governor's Reorganization Plan, filed April 25, 1983, and as set out under N.J.S.A. 18A:73-26; and the successor to the Public Records Office established under P.L. 1920, c.46, as amended by P.L. 1924, c.203 (N.J.S.A. 47:2-1 to 8):
1. For the preservation of those public records and related material that have been determined by the division to have sufficient historical and other permanent or enduring value to warrant their continued preservation by the State;
2. For the maintenance, administration, and use of public records that have been accepted by the division for physical and legal transfer to its custody; and
3. For publishing, exhibiting, and disseminating, by means of public educational programs and research materials, information relating to the management and preservation of public records and to the history of the State of New Jersey and its political subdivisions.
"State Records Committee" or "the Committee" means:
the Committee composed of the State Treasurer, the Attorney General, the State Auditor, the Director of the Division of Local Government Services in the Department of Community Affairs, and the Director of the Division of Archives and Records Management, and two representatives of State and local agencies, or their designated representatives, as established under P.L. 1953, c.410, § 6 (N.J.S. 47:3-20 et al.), to approve retention schedules, review requests for disposal of public records, approve standards, rules and regulations pertaining to public records, and advise on public records access requests.
"State Records Storage Center" or "State Records Center"
The Need for Speed: Georgia Tech’s Racing Roots, part 2
The Need for Speed: Georgia Tech’s Racing Roots, part 2
By Stacy Braukman and Doug Goodwin | Published October, 2017
In the decades following World War II, as cars became an American obsession and racing grew ever more popular, countless Tech students, alumni, and faculty continued to gravitate to all things automotive. Drivers, builders, designers, engineers, executives, and even academics with ties to Georgia Tech made their mark on the worlds of stock car and drag racing.
For the uninitiated, stock car racing involves customized race cars styled after passenger vehicles, with drivers pursuing the top finishing position in endurance races on closed-circuit tracks. NASCAR, the sport's sanctioning body founded in 1948, operates three major national series — the premier-level Monster Energy Cup Series, the second-tier Xfinity Series, and the developmental Camping World Truck Series. While the series names have changed frequently over the years as corporate sponsorships evolved, the family-run governing body has sanctioned the sport for seven decades.
Daytona International Speedway
Source: Source: DVIDS, author: Senior Airman
Jason Couillard, Feb. 22, 2015. Public Domain.
The shift from dirt to asphalt tracks such as Darlington Raceway in South Carolina helped the sport grow wildly in the 1950s. The Daytona International Speedway, a 2.5-mile track with high banks that made for high speeds, opened at the end of the decade, and in 1961, the Firecracker 250 from Daytona Beach was the first major race to be televised, on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, bringing stock car racing to a truly national audience.
Drag racing experienced similar growth during the same era. An evolution of early automotive time trials on beaches and desert flats, drag racing pushes drivers to compete for the fastest straight-line speed on long, asphalt or concrete strips. The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) was founded in 1951 to provide structure and safety rules, and now governs five professional classes of top-level drag racing.
As both forms of American motorsports evolved, three Georgia Tech men were instrumental in advancing technological innovations that enhanced not only speed, but also its all-too-necessary counterpart, safety.
Left: Georgia Racing Hall of Fame inductee Ed Samples won the 1946 national stock car championship behind the wheel of Bob Osiecki-engineered Fords.
Source: State Library & Archives of Florida
Right: Ed Samples and Bob Osiecki work under the hood of the No. 90 car at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in June 1946. Osiecki helped organize the rules for NASCAR the following year.
Source: Eddie Samples
The Aeronautics Professor and the Speed Record
"The whole secret is in the wings," engineer Bob Osiecki told Sports Illustrated. On August 28, 1961, Osiecki’s winged race car, “Mad Dog IV,” set a world speed record at Daytona International Speedway. A 25-year-old daredevil drag racer named Art Malone piloted the custom-built Kurtis Kraft roadster with a Chrysler V8 engine to a blistering 181.561 mph — a feat made possible by input from a Georgia Tech aeronautics professor.
The Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine called the achievement “something like scaling Mount Everest for the first time,” noting that “many of the world’s mightiest racing cars had tried and failed. Some of these powerful machines spun out and crashed on Daytona’s straightaways and steeply graded turns, carrying drivers to death.” (Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Vol. 40, no. 7, May 1962, p. 8)
Born in New York and raised in southwest Atlanta, Bob Osiecki briefly studied mechanical engineering at Tech before leaving in 1940 to serve in the Army Air Force during World War II, as did his older brother Thomas A. Osiecki, ME 1939, a Georgia Tech Gold Star alumnus killed in 1944 while stationed with the Navy in the Pacific. The elder Osiecki is memorialized at the entrance to the William C. Wardlaw Center on North Avenue.
After the war, Bob's return to civilian life in Atlanta did not mean a return to college life, however, and he instead focused his efforts on designing and building race cars and custom equipment from his namesake garage, located southwest of the Tech campus on Sells Avenue. In the late 1940s, he became an influential figure in the early years of stock car racing, crafting and sponsoring winning race cars at Atlanta's Lakewood Speedway, Daytona’s beach and road courses, and at dirt tracks throughout the Carolinas. Osiecki was among the 35 men who helped promoter Bill France Sr. formally organize NASCAR during a series of meetings in 1947 and 1948, alongside his racing rivals: Atlanta mechanic Red Vogt and pioneer team owner and financier Raymond Parks. France named Osiecki a charter member of NASCAR and car owner representative to the first Board of Governors.
By the mid-1950s, Osiecki was a name familiar to hardcore gearheads. Popular Science magazine prominently featured his techniques on dynamic engine balancing in February 1952, and he successfully marketed self-branded engine equipment to speed shops. Having founded the International Timing Association, an early, Southeast-based competitor to the NHRA, he also promoted and sanctioned major international drag races along the east coast. Chrysler Corporation hired Osiecki to manage its NASCAR program in 1957 and the owner-mechanic fielded numerous race entries over the following six seasons, piloted by notable drivers including Jim Delaney, Marvin Panch, and Ralph Earnhardt (father of Dale Earnhardt Sr.).
Bob Osiecki
At the time of the record-breaking run, the track in Daytona had only been open for two years, and it boasted the highest banking (and therefore elicited the highest speeds) of any speedway. Before the track opened in 1959, France (who was also the man behind the Daytona Speedway) took Osiecki on a 125 mph ride around the 31-degree banked turns in his personal car. "After about two laps around, I was ready to call it quits," said Osiecki to the Greensboro Daily News. "Bill wanted to make sure I saw all the safety points of the track. Why, he demonstrated things you could do on this track that you would never do on another one."
A fatal crash just prior to the inaugural Daytona 500 led many to fear that its extreme features made it inherently unsafe. In 1960, in an effort to silence the critics and prove the speedway’s soundness, France offered a $10,000 cash prize to the first person who could surpass the 180-mph mark. The world speed record was 177.38 mph, set three years earlier in Monza, Italy.
When Osiecki decided to take on France’s challenge, he knew he needed to make adjustments to his car to counter the centrifugal force from the track’s high-banked curves, which tore away tire rubber at high speeds and made steering almost impossible.
After failed attempts at Daytona with three different cars and multiple drivers, Osiecki consulted with Georgia Tech Professor John J. Harper, MS AE 1942, in the Institute’s then School of Aeronautics (forerunner to today’s Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering), whose teaching and research focused on aircraft aerodynamics, performance, and design. Now, he would be applying his expertise to a race car.
Osiecki shipped the Mad Dog IV from Charlotte, North Carolina to the Guggenheim Building, where Harper also oversaw the daily operations of the 9-foot diameter wind tunnel located on the ground floor. The professor and his students designed and tested a pair of inverted airfoils — wings, in effect — each one measuring 3 square feet. Harper also created a vertical stationary tail fin, similar to an airplane rudder, for increased stability.
John Harper
On that balmy August afternoon in Daytona, as Tech’s alumni magazine reported, the Mad Dog IV’s “wings and tail held the car steady though the tortuous turns and down the breathless straightaways,” setting a new standard for speed. It was “obvious that the soft-spoken Harper is pleased at having helped wed science and racing to give the fans more thrills.” (p. 9)
John Harper retired from Georgia Tech in 1986, after a 44-year career. A private pilot who built his own airplane and had a lifelong love of model planes, ships, and radio-controlled vehicles, he died in 1998 at the age of 78. His family requested that gifts be made in his memory to support a scholarship fund at Tech. Today, the wind tunnel in the Guggenheim School bears his name.
The Daytona speed record proved to be Osiecki's signature accomplishment. He leveraged his celebrity status to promote auto shows throughout the southeast and opened his own Dodge dealership in Florence, South Carolina in 1964. The dealership also housed the Osiecki Automotive Mechanic School, which Bob created to share his skills and knowledge with a full class of 60 aspiring mechanics. As a contribution to his community, he offered the training at no cost to his students.
Bob Osiecki died suddenly of a heart attack at age 43, just three years after his marvelous machine broke the world record at Daytona.
Their record-setting Mad Dog IV race car remains in public view at the Don Garlits Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, Florida.
Left: The John Harper wind tunnel under the Guggenheim Building has been used to test radar antennae, stadium lights, rotor blades, business jets, fighter planes, and the record-breaking Mad Dog IV racecar.
Right: Professor Harper's inverted airfoils and tail fin helped stabilize Osiecki's Dodge-powered roadster on the high banks of Daytona International Speedway.
Engineering Safety, Saving Lives
Atlanta native Jim Downing, IM 1966, whose father was a car dealer, had an early and abiding passion for automobiles and racing. He raced in soapbox derbies in his youth, restored and built race cars as an adult, and spent several years as a Mazda-sponsored driver in International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) races. Downing enjoyed success at every level — winning five IMSA championships; designing and building his own race car, the Kudzu DG-1, which he drove in the American Le Mans Series from the 1980s through 2000; and owning and operating a machine shop and carbon composite shop in Chamblee, Georgia.
But he is best known as one of the people behind an innovation that revolutionized racing. It had nothing to do with enhancing speed and everything to do with saving drivers’ lives.
Jim Downing
From helmets and seatbelts in the early days to roll cages, window netting, and softwall technology for outer wall barriers on tracks, engineers have long worked to make racing safer as the cars got faster.
In the 1980s, Downing helped design the Head and Neck Support (HANS) device with his brother-in-law, Bob Hubbard, a crash engineer at General Motors with a Ph.D. in biomechanics. They were looking for a way to mitigate the often catastrophic effects on a driver upon impact when the body is restrained but the head isn’t. Hubbard came up with the idea, and they obtained a patent and built the first prototypes in Downing’s composite shop. By the end of the decade, Downing was wearing one himself whenever he got behind the wheel of a race car.
The device is a restraint that uses a raised collar behind the neck, and two tethers that link both sides of the helmet to the collar. The shoulder belts hold the collar in place, keeping the head and neck securely aligned with the torso so that in a forward impact, they are moving in synch and the driver is significantly less likely to suffer a fatal basilar skull fracture or other severe head and neck injuries.
The HANS device keeps the head and neck in alignment with the torso.
The HANS device went on the market in the early 1990s, but most drivers weren’t thrilled at the thought of strapping on more potentially cumbersome or otherwise inconvenient safety equipment. It wasn’t until four fatal NASCAR crashes occurred in an eight-month period — the last one involving legendary driver Dale Earnhardt Sr. on February 18, 2001, in the final lap of the Daytona 500 — that the sport got serious about this specific type of injury. As Downing recalled in a 2011 interview, “I took orders for 250 in the first week after Earnhardt was killed.” NASCAR amended its rules to mandate head and neck restraints.
Over the years, Downing has continued to test, modify, and improve the performance and design of the HANS device — based in part on what drivers have to say about how it actually functions in the field, and how it affects their mobility and comfort in addition to safety. Today, the Downing/Atlanta shop continues to thrive as a place where race car parts are made and sold, race cars are repaired and restored, and HANS devices and accessories are sold.
In 2011, reflecting on his career that has touched so many aspects of the sport he loves, Downing said that he was “thrilled that I’m known now as the HANS guy. This is important for everybody in racing. It’s far more important than being a racer.”
Here’s a look at other notable Georgia Tech-connected gearheads who contributed to this period of racing’s profound transformation from regional sport to global phenomenon:
1950
The Hester brothers were pictured as children
on the fender of Gober Sosebee's No. 50 Fords.
The Hester Family and the Cherokee Garage
As children, Gene Hester, IM 1966, MS IMGT 1972, and John Hester, ARCH 1970, marveled at the self-taught skills of their father Billie “Sunday” Hester, ace mechanic and owner of the Cherokee Garage at West Peachtree Place and Techwood Drive (what is today Centennial Olympic Park Drive).
The senior Hester built and sponsored stock cars for notable drivers Gober Sosebee, Charlie Mincey, Jerry Wimbish, and other pioneer racers. Dawsonville native Sosebee drove his Hester-tuned machines to three wins on the Daytona Beach course and captured two official NASCAR victories in the early 1950s.
Billie Hester’s reputation for honest, quality automotive service became well known around the Georgia Tech campus, and faculty and students alike brought their vehicles to the Cherokee Garage for repairs over its four decades of operation. After leaving the racing world in the mid-1950s, Hester focused his time and energy on his family and on his shop.
Gene and John Hester
Sons Gene and John Hester, who recalled watching stock car races at the nearby Peach Bowl and Lakewood Speedway, also have many fond memories of Georgia Tech — especially watching the Ramblin’ Wreck parades and working as ushers during football games at Grant Field in the Bobby Dodd era (1945-67). Both chose to attend Tech, and the family legacy continued with Gene’s son Kevin Hester, MGMT 1989, and John’s son Matthew Hester, ME 2000.
Billie Hester was elected to the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame in 2004, just the second mechanic to receive the honor.
The former site of the Cherokee Garage is now part of Centennial Olympic Park.
1952
Tommy Smith and the Causey 1936 Oldsmobile
Tommy Smith
As a senior at Georgia Tech, Bowling Green, Kentucky native Tommy Smith, IM 1952, was hired by stock car builder Hugh Porter Causey to race his 1936 Oldsmobile No. F-38. After graduation, Smith began drag racing while also serving in the U.S. Air Force. He set a speed record in April 1954 at Pomona, California, behind the wheel of his own 1952 Olds 88 — a feat noted by Hot Rod magazine. He returned to Kentucky to join his father Gordon Smith’s successful compressor business and later became vice president of the company, receiving several patents before the age of 30. Smith inspired and supported the creation of a dragway at the same Beech Bend Raceway Park where he had raced stock cars while a Tech student. Beech Bend remains one of the nation's oldest continuously operating drag strips, conducting NHRA-sanctioned events.
1954
Above: The Georgia Tech Auto Club built one
of the earliest dragsters in the state.
Below: Julius Hughes Jr. accepting his trophy at
the 1964 NHRA Nationals.
Jack Lane, Julius Hughes Jr., and the Georgia Tech Auto Club
In 1954, Jack Lane, ME 1957, and several fellow auto enthusiasts formed the Georgia Tech Auto Club, the precursor to today’s GT Motorsports programs. The group’s first project was to build a rail dragster from salvaged parts. Lacking an engine for the car, the Auto Club reached an agreement with local drag racer Hoyt Grimes to install his modified Cadillac engine. Considered the first real dragster in Georgia, the student-engineered machine was piloted by Grimes to speeds above 90 mph.
Another charter member of the Georgia Tech Auto Club, Julius Hughes Jr., IE 1960, took his drag racing interests to the national stage, winning top-tier events in Kansas City, Daytona Beach, and Oklahoma City. Hughes opened the Atlanta Speed Shop in 1960 and took over management of the Newton County Drag Strip, the first venue in Georgia sanctioned by the NHRA.
Hughes later became a stock car owner and operator, competing in the NASCAR and Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) series. In the 1970s, he raced speedboats with his son Julius Hughes III, IE 1993, who apprenticed under his father’s expertise. He remains an active Nostalgia Top Fuel drag racer and still operates the Atlanta Speed Shop in Gainesville, Georgia, making cars and boats go as fast as possible.
1959
"Sneaky Pete" Robinson
L.R. "Sneaky Pete" Robinson
Atlanta native Lew Russell Robinson began drag racing at metro area strips while attending classes at the Georgia Tech school of aeronautics. Shortly after his graduation, Robinson towed his 1940 Ford to Detroit to compete in the 1959 NHRA Nationals. His lack of success in the 1959 and 1960 races spurred him to push for more speed, selling his Ford for resources to buy and build a new custom dragster. A virtual unknown, Robinson captured the 1961 NHRA southeast regional event in Covington, Georgia and won the Top Eliminator championship at the 1961 NHRA Nationals in Indianapolis.
Earning the nickname "Sneaky Pete" for his near-obsessive attention to weight reduction, performance, and safety, Robinson continued to find innovative, rule-bending ways to make his hot rods faster and lighter. His compressed air-based self-starting system was later mandated by the NHRA for its major series.
Robinson was tragically killed during a qualifying run for the 1971 Winternationals in Pomona, California. In 2001, he was cited 22nd among the NHRA's 50 greatest drivers.
1960
Richard Jackson
Driver Rick Mast captured the pole for
the 1994 Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis.
Source: Wikimedia, Doctorindy, 6 Aug 1994. CC BY-SA 3.0
Richard Jackson
Born in 1937, former NASCAR team owner Richard Jackson, ME 1960, built his first race car when he was 18 with his brother Leo Jr. In the mid-1950s, they raced it at the McCormick Field baseball stadium in Asheville, North Carolina, as Jackson began his engineering studies at Georgia Tech. Following graduation, Jackson joined his father and brother to open the Precision Performance Products Center, which creates specialized, high-performance parts for racing engines.
The Jackson brothers formed Precision Products Racing in 1974, fielding cars in the top NASCAR national series over 16 seasons for wheelmen such as Benny Parsons, Harry Gant, and Dave Marcis. In 1988, Phil Parsons drove the No. 55 Oldsmobile to victory at Talladega, the sole premier series win for the team and driver.
Richard Jackson branched off with his own racing operation in 1990, with veteran driver and eventual two-time NASCAR champion Terry Labonte behind the wheel. Driver Rick Mast piloted Jackson's No. 1 Ford from the pole position at the inaugural stock car race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1994.
Jackson sold his team and retired from racing in 2001. He passed away in 2010.
1969
Tom DeLoach at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Source: Red Horse Racing
Tom DeLoach
Chemical engineer Tom DeLoach Jr., ChE 1969, joined Mobil Oil Corporation shortly after graduating. Working his way up the ladder at Mobil, DeLoach became chief financial officer in 1994 and worldwide coordinator of the motor sports program until his retirement in 2000. Later, he formed Pit Instruction and Training to help train racing pit crews, and was a consultant for Penske Racing’s NASCAR Cup teams. DeLoach saw an opportunity to become more directly involved with stock car racing in 2005, buying out an existing team in the NASCAR Truck Series that he renamed Red Horse Racing. Over 12 seasons in the series, he celebrated 16 wins with seven different racers.
1973
Jack Folden's design work for Pontiac was
translated to the NASCAR Grand Prix race car.
Source: Flickr, author: Darryl Moran, 2 Nov 1997. CC-BY-SA 2.0
Jack Folden
General Motors recognized the talents of John R. "Jack" Folden, ID 1973, while he was a student at Georgia Tech. Hired by GM Design in 1974, Folden helped create iconic styling for the GM, Pontiac, and Buick brands, including the Grand Am, Firebird, Bonneville, Riviera, and Enclave. Beyond consumer vehicles, Folden’s influence extended to the racetrack, as he worked on the Pontiac Grand Prix model for the NASCAR Cup Series and the Fiero Grand Touring Prototype. Jack Folden retired in 2008 as director of design for GM and moved back to the Atlanta area. Most recently, he shared his design expertise with auto enthusiasts on campus as a guest speaker at the 2017 Georgia Tech Auto Show.
1978
Kyle Petty
Source: Largemouth Communications
Kyle Petty
A member of one of racing’s most famous families, Kyle Petty followed his father, the legendary Richard Petty, and grandfather Lee Petty into his own NASCAR career at age 18. Over the course of 31 seasons and 829 starts, Kyle won eight premier series races. Today, he is a television analyst for NBC Sports.
But at one point his racing future had hung briefly in the balance, when Georgia Tech head coach Pepper Rodgers (1974-79) offered him a football scholarship. A three-sport athlete at Randleman High School in North Carolina, Petty received multiple offers to play Division I football. After visiting campus and watching practice, he opted to forgo the gridiron. Years later, he told the Los Angeles Times, “I liked Georgia Tech, but when I went out there and I looked at all these guys in neck braces and knee braces and casts on their arms, I thought, ‘Wait a minute! There’s more injuries here in one game than there are in a season of racing.’” In a tragic irony, his son Adam died in 2000 in an on-track crash. His was among the flurry of racing deaths that prompted NASCAR to mandate use of the HANS device the following year.
1986
Tom Hammonds' 2008 Pro Stock Chevrolet
Source: Tom Hammonds
Former Yellow Jacket standout Tom Hammonds
Tom Hammonds
A power forward for 12 seasons in the NBA, Georgia Tech Hall of Fame inductee and 1986 NCAA Rookie of the Year Tom Hammonds, MGMT 1990, is also a lifelong car enthusiast with a second career as a NHRA drag racer. While playing for Coach Bobby Cremins in 1986, Hammonds often snuck away from campus to tractor pulls and a dragstrip in Paulding County, where he raced his 1955 Chevrolet hot rod. “I think I gave Bobby some of those white hairs on top of his head, because whenever we did not have practice or a game, I was always trying to find a track and race,” he recalled in 2005.
During his NBA rookie season, Hammonds bought a 1969 Camaro and started his own drag racing team, becoming the sole African-American driver and owner in the NHRA Pro Stock series. He entered the General Motors Minority Dealer Development program in 1997 and realized his dream of owning his own car dealership in Darlington, South Carolina, also home to the oldest asphalt track in NASCAR racing.
Tom Hammonds has since sold the Chevrolet dealership and relocated to his hometown of Crestview, Florida.
1988
Sterling Skinner
Sterling Skinner Jr.
The first time that Sterling Skinner Jr., ME 1991, MS ME 1995, watched the Ramblin’ Wreck parade, he was a young child sitting on the shoulders of his father, Sterling Skinner, EE 1966. From that moment, he knew Georgia Tech was where he wanted to be. During his freshman year, Skinner was a founding member of the GT Motorsports Formula SAE team, reigniting the student-powered racing tradition begun in 1954 by the Georgia Tech Auto Club.
Selected as a GM Scholar in 1988, Skinner spent three summers working for General Motors’ transmission program before earning a master’s degree in 1995. For the past two decades, he has managed the instructional labs in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, designing experiments and maintaining equipment for undergraduate engineers.
Inspired to better connect the racing and gearhead communities on campus, in 2003 he founded the Georgia Tech Auto Show, an annual celebration and showcase of auto engineering and design. In 2009, Skinner met NASCAR Hall of Fame car owner Raymond Parks and his wife Violet, and had the rare opportunity to work on his Cadillac while listening to stories of stock car racing’s early years.
2004
Ben Shackleford
Ben A. Shackleford
Nearly 60 years after the founding of NASCAR, third-generation Georgia Tech alumnus Ben A. Shackleford, Ph.D. HSTS 2004, wrote his dissertation on the history and culture of stock car racing. His research included access to minutes from NASCAR’s 1947 organizational meeting, which have never been released to the public. Shackleford also edited the memoirs of NASCAR legend Smokey Yunick, helping the trailblazing mechanic tell his own story, which originated in Red Vogt’s Atlanta garage just blocks from the Tech campus. Today, Shackleford works as a sociologist for the U.S. Treasury in Atlanta, and graciously helped his alma mater tell this story of its racing roots.
Did we miss a story? Email Georgia Tech Living History with details about any Tech ties to auto racing — past, present, or future.
Learn more about the historical connections between Georgia Tech and some of racing’s most notable pioneers in the first installment of Georgia Tech's Racing Roots.
CREDITS
Writers: Stacy Braukman and Doug A. Goodwin
Digital Design: Monet Fort
Published October 6, 2017
Acknowledgments & Sources
Associated Press | Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Atlanta Speed Shop | Mike Bell | Downing/Atlanta | DragRaceResults.com | State Library & Archives of Florida | GenealogyBank.com | GeorgiaRacingHistory.com |Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine| Georgia Tech Living History Program | Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering | Billie Hester family | ISC Archives & Research Center | JalopyJournal/The H.A.M.B. | NCAA | Bob Osiecki family | Kyle Petty Charity Ride / Largemouth Communications | Racing-Reference.com | Red Horse Racing | Eddie Samples | Ben A. Shackleford | Tommy Smith family | Smith Motor Compressor Club | Frank Spittle |The Technique| George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
"A Tech Professor Designs Wings For The Racer of Tomorrow,"Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 40, No. 07, 1962, p. 8-9, Frank Bigger.
"Nothing Faster on a Track,"Popular Hot Rodding magazine - Vol. 1, No. 1, 1962, p. 60-63
Forty Years of Stock Car Racing - 1987, Greg Fielden
“The Sons Are Shining in Auto Racing,” Los Angeles Times - November 5, 1987, Jim Murray
"2.5 Miles--flat out,"Hemmings Muscle Machines magazine - June, 2007, Matthew Litwin
Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR - 2007, Neal Thompson
Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France- 2010, Daniel S. Pierce
Bowling Green Stock Car Racing - 2010, Larry Upton and Jonathan Jeffrey
Encyclopedia of Stock Car Racing - 2013, Lew Freedman
"The Mad Dog's Daytona Speed Test," Speed Sport magazine - September 18, 2014, Bob Gates
"Bob Osiecki's Mad Dog IV, Chrysler Powered Speed Winner,"Street Muscle magazine - Sep 30, 2014, Bobby Kimbrough
The Early Laps of Stock Car Racing: A History of the Sport and Business- 2014, Betty Boles Ellison
"The Legend of 'Sneaky Pete' Robinson,"Hot Rod magazine - 19 June 2015, Jim Hill.
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24.3. Continuous Archiving and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR)
At all times, PostgreSQL maintains a write ahead log (WAL) in the subdirectory of the cluster's data directory. The log records every change made to the database's data files. This log exists primarily for crash-safety purposes: if the system crashes, the database can be restored to consistency by "replaying" the log entries made since the last checkpoint. However, the existence of the log makes it possible to use a third strategy for backing up databases: we can combine a file-system-level backup with backup of the WAL files. If recovery is needed, we restore the file system backup and then replay from the backed-up WAL files to bring the system to a current state. This approach is more complex to administer than either of the previous approaches, but it has some significant benefits:
We do not need a perfectly consistent file system backup as the starting point. Any internal inconsistency in the backup will be corrected by log replay (this is not significantly different from what happens during crash recovery). So we do not need a file system snapshot capability, just tar or a similar archiving tool.
Since we can combine an indefinitely long sequence of WAL files for replay, continuous backup can be achieved simply by continuing to archive the WAL files. This is particularly valuable for large databases, where it might not be convenient to take a full backup frequently.
It is not necessary to replay the WAL entries all the way to the end. We could stop the replay at any point and have a consistent snapshot of the database as it was at that time. Thus, this technique supports point-in-time recovery: it is possible to restore the database to its state at any time since your base backup was taken.
If we continuously feed the series of WAL files to another machine that has been loaded with the same base backup file, we have a warm standby system: at any point we can bring up the second machine and it will have a nearly-current copy of the database.
Note:pg_dump and pg_dumpall do not produce file-system-level backups and cannot be used as part of a continuous-archiving solution. Such dumps are logical and do not contain enough information to be used by WAL replay.
As with the plain file-system-backup technique, this method can only support restoration of an entire database cluster, not a subset. Also, it requires a lot of archival storage: the base backup might be bulky, and a busy system will generate many megabytes of WAL traffic that have to be archived. Still, it is the preferred backup technique in many situations where high reliability is needed.
To recover successfully using continuous archiving (also called "online backup" by many database vendors), you need a continuous sequence of archived WAL files that extends back at least as far as the start time of your backup. So to get started, you should set up and test your procedure for archiving WAL files before you take your first base backup. Accordingly, we first discuss the mechanics of archiving WAL files.
24.3.1. Setting Up WAL Archiving
In an abstract sense, a running PostgreSQL system produces an indefinitely long sequence of WAL records. The system physically divides this sequence into WAL segment files, which are normally 16MB apiece (although the segment size can be altered when building PostgreSQL). The segment files are given numeric names that reflect their position in the abstract WAL sequence. When not using WAL archiving, the system normally creates just a few segment files and then "recycles" them by renaming no-longer-needed segment files to higher segment numbers. It's assumed that segment files whose contents precede the checkpoint-before-last are no longer of interest and can be recycled.
When archiving WAL data, we need to capture the contents of each segment file once it is filled, and save that data somewhere before the segment file is recycled for reuse. Depending on the application and the available hardware, there could be many different ways of "saving the data somewhere": we could copy the segment files to an NFS-mounted directory on another machine, write them onto a tape drive (ensuring that you have a way of identifying the original name of each file), or batch them together and burn them onto CDs, or something else entirely. To provide the database administrator with flexibility, PostgreSQL tries not to make any assumptions about how the archiving will be done. Instead, PostgreSQL lets the administrator specify a shell command to be executed to copy a completed segment file to wherever it needs to go. The command could be as simple as a , or it could invoke a complex shell script — it's all up to you.
To enable WAL archiving, set the wal_level configuration parameter to (or ), archive_mode to , and specify the shell command to use in the archive_command configuration parameter. In practice these settings will always be placed in the file. In , is replaced by the path name of the file to archive, while is replaced by only the file name. (The path name is relative to the current working directory, i.e., the cluster's data directory.) Use if you need to embed an actual character in the command. The simplest useful command is something like:
archive_command = 'test ! -f /mnt/server/archivedir/%f && cp %p /mnt/server/archivedir/%f' # Unix archive_command = 'copy "%p" "C:\\server\\archivedir\\%f"' # Windowswhich will copy archivable WAL segments to the directory . (This is an example, not a recommendation, and might not work on all platforms.) After the and parameters have been replaced, the actual command executed might look like this:
test ! -f /mnt/server/archivedir/00000001000000A900000065 && cp pg_xlog/00000001000000A900000065 /mnt/server/archivedir/00000001000000A900000065A similar command will be generated for each new file to be archived.
The archive command will be executed under the ownership of the same user that the PostgreSQL server is running as. Since the series of WAL files being archived contains effectively everything in your database, you will want to be sure that the archived data is protected from prying eyes; for example, archive into a directory that does not have group or world read access.
It is important that the archive command return zero exit status if and only if it succeeds. Upon getting a zero result, PostgreSQL will assume that the file has been successfully archived, and will remove or recycle it. However, a nonzero status tells PostgreSQL that the file was not archived; it will try again periodically until it succeeds.
The archive command should generally be designed to refuse to overwrite any pre-existing archive file. This is an important safety feature to preserve the integrity of your archive in case of administrator error (such as sending the output of two different servers to the same archive directory).
It is advisable to test your proposed archive command to ensure that it indeed does not overwrite an existing file, and that it returns nonzero status in this case. The example command above for Unix ensures this by including a separate step. On some Unix platforms, has switches such as that can be used to do the same thing less verbosely, but you should not rely on these without verifying that the right exit status is returned. (In particular, GNU will return status zero when is used and the target file already exists, which is not the desired behavior.)
While designing your archiving setup, consider what will happen if the archive command fails repeatedly because some aspect requires operator intervention or the archive runs out of space. For example, this could occur if you write to tape without an autochanger; when the tape fills, nothing further can be archived until the tape is swapped. You should ensure that any error condition or request to a human operator is reported appropriately so that the situation can be resolved reasonably quickly. The directory will continue to fill with WAL segment files until the situation is resolved. (If the file system containing fills up, PostgreSQL will do a PANIC shutdown. No committed transactions will be lost, but the database will remain offline until you free some space.)
The speed of the archiving command is unimportant as long as it can keep up with the average rate at which your server generates WAL data. Normal operation continues even if the archiving process falls a little behind. If archiving falls significantly behind, this will increase the amount of data that would be lost in the event of a disaster. It will also mean that the directory will contain large numbers of not-yet-archived segment files, which could eventually exceed available disk space. You are advised to monitor the archiving process to ensure that it is working as you intend.
In writing your archive command, you should assume that the file names to be archived can be up to 64 characters long and can contain any combination of ASCII letters, digits, and dots. It is not necessary to preserve the original relative path () but it is necessary to preserve the file name ().
Note that although WAL archiving will allow you to restore any modifications made to the data in your PostgreSQL database, it will not restore changes made to configuration files (that is, , and ), since those are edited manually rather than through SQL operations. You might wish to keep the configuration files in a location that will be backed up by your regular file system backup procedures. See Section 18.2 for how to relocate the configuration files.
The archive command is only invoked on completed WAL segments. Hence, if your server generates only little WAL traffic (or has slack periods where it does so), there could be a long delay between the completion of a transaction and its safe recording in archive storage. To put a limit on how old unarchived data can be, you can set archive_timeout to force the server to switch to a new WAL segment file at least that often. Note that archived files that are archived early due to a forced switch are still the same length as completely full files. It is therefore unwise to set a very short — it will bloat your archive storage. settings of a minute or so are usually reasonable.
Also, you can force a segment switch manually with if you want to ensure that a just-finished transaction is archived as soon as possible. Other utility functions related to WAL management are listed in Table 9-61.
When is some SQL commands are optimized to avoid WAL logging, as described in Section 14.4.7. If archiving or streaming replication were turned on during execution of one of these statements, WAL would not contain enough information for archive recovery. (Crash recovery is unaffected.) For this reason, can only be changed at server start. However, can be changed with a configuration file reload. If you wish to temporarily stop archiving, one way to do it is to set to the empty string (). This will cause WAL files to accumulate in until a working is re-established.
24.3.2. Making a Base Backup
The easiest way to perform a base backup is to use the pg_basebackup tool. It can create a base backup either as regular files or as a tar archive. If more flexibility than pg_basebackup can provide is required, you can also make a base backup using the low level API (see Section 24.3.3).
It is not necessary to be concerned about the amount of time it takes to make a base backup. However, if you normally run the server with disabled, you might notice a drop in performance while the backup runs since is effectively forced on during backup mode.
To make use of the backup, you will need to keep all the WAL segment files generated during and after the file system backup. To aid you in doing this, the base backup process creates a backup history file that is immediately stored into the WAL archive area. This file is named after the first WAL segment file that you need for the file system backup. For example, if the starting WAL file is the backup history file will be named something like . (The second part of the file name stands for an exact position within the WAL file, and can ordinarily be ignored.) Once you have safely archived the file system backup and the WAL segment files used during the backup (as specified in the backup history file), all archived WAL segments with names numerically less are no longer needed to recover the file system backup and can be deleted. However, you should consider keeping several backup sets to be absolutely certain that you can recover your data.
The backup history file is just a small text file. It contains the label string you gave to pg_basebackup, as well as the starting and ending times and WAL segments of the backup. If you used the label to identify the associated dump file, then the archived history file is enough to tell you which dump file to restore.
Since you have to keep around all the archived WAL files back to your last base backup, the interval between base backups should usually be chosen based on how much storage you want to expend on archived WAL files. You should also consider how long you are prepared to spend recovering, if recovery should be necessary — the system will have to replay all those WAL segments, and that could take awhile if it has been a long time since the last base backup.
24.3.3. Making a Base Backup Using the Low Level API
The procedure for making a base backup using the low level APIs contains a few more steps than the pg_basebackup method, but is relatively simple. It is very important that these steps are executed in sequence, and that the success of a step is verified before proceeding to the next step.
Ensure that WAL archiving is enabled and working.
Connect to the database as a superuser and issue the command:
SELECT pg_start_backup('label');where is any string you want to use to uniquely identify this backup operation. (One good practice is to use the full path where you intend to put the backup dump file.) creates a backup label file, called , in the cluster directory with information about your backup, including the start time and label string. The file is critical to the integrity of the backup, should you need to restore from it.
It does not matter which database within the cluster you connect to to issue this command. You can ignore the result returned by the function; but if it reports an error, deal with that before proceeding.
By default, can take a long time to finish. This is because it performs a checkpoint, and the I/O required for the checkpoint will be spread out over a significant period of time, by default half your inter-checkpoint interval (see the configuration parameter checkpoint_completion_target). This is usually what you want, because it minimizes the impact on query processing. If you want to start the backup as soon as possible, use:
SELECT pg_start_backup('label', true);This forces the checkpoint to be done as quickly as possible.
Perform the backup, using any convenient file-system-backup tool such as tar or cpio (not pg_dump or pg_dumpall). It is neither necessary nor desirable to stop normal operation of the database while you do this.
Again connect to the database as a superuser, and issue the command:
SELECT pg_stop_backup();This terminates the backup mode and performs an automatic switch to the next WAL segment. The reason for the switch is to arrange for the last WAL segment file written during the backup interval to be ready to archive.
Once the WAL segment files active during the backup are archived, you are done. The file identified by 's result is the last segment that is required to form a complete set of backup files. If is enabled, does not return until the last segment has been archived. Archiving of these files happens automatically since you have already configured . In most cases this happens quickly, but you are advised to monitor your archive system to ensure there are no delays. If the archive process has fallen behind because of failures of the archive command, it will keep retrying until the archive succeeds and the backup is complete. If you wish to place a time limit on the execution of , set an appropriate value.
Some file system backup tools emit warnings or errors if the files they are trying to copy change while the copy proceeds. When taking a base backup of an active database, this situation is normal and not an error. However, you need to ensure that you can distinguish complaints of this sort from real errors. For example, some versions of rsync return a separate exit code for "vanished source files", and you can write a driver script to accept this exit code as a non-error case. Also, some versions of GNU tar return an error code indistinguishable from a fatal error if a file was truncated while tar was copying it. Fortunately, GNU tar versions 1.16 and later exit with 1 if a file was changed during the backup, and 2 for other errors. With GNU tar version 1.23 and later, you can use the warning options to hide the related warning messages.
Be certain that your backup dump includes all of the files under the database cluster directory (e.g., ). If you are using tablespaces that do not reside underneath this directory, be careful to include them as well (and be sure that your backup dump archives symbolic links as links, otherwise the restore will corrupt your tablespaces).
You can, however, omit from the backup dump the files within the cluster's subdirectory. This slight adjustment is worthwhile because it reduces the risk of mistakes when restoring. This is easy to arrange if is a symbolic link pointing to someplace outside the cluster directory, which is a common setup anyway for performance reasons. You might also want to exclude and , which record information about the running postmaster, not about the postmaster which will eventually use this backup. (These files can confuse pg_ctl.)
It's also worth noting that the function makes a file named in the database cluster directory, which is removed by . This file will of course be archived as a part of your backup dump file. The backup label file includes the label string you gave to , as well as the time at which was run, and the name of the starting WAL file. In case of confusion it is therefore possible to look inside a backup dump file and determine exactly which backup session the dump file came from. However, this file is not merely for your information; its presence and contents are critical to the proper operation of the system's recovery process.
It is also possible to make a backup dump while the server is stopped. In this case, you obviously cannot use or , and you will therefore be left to your own devices to keep track of which backup dump is which and how far back the associated WAL files go. It is generally better to follow the continuous archiving procedure above.
24.3.4. Recovering Using a Continuous Archive Backup
Okay, the worst has happened and you need to recover from your backup. Here is the procedure:
Stop the server, if it's running.
If you have the space to do so, copy the whole cluster data directory and any tablespaces to a temporary location in case you need them later. Note that this precaution will require that you have enough free space on your system to hold two copies of your existing database. If you do not have enough space, you should at least save the contents of the cluster's subdirectory, as it might contain logs which were not archived before the system went down.
Remove all existing files and subdirectories under the cluster data directory and under the root directories of any tablespaces you are using.
Restore the database files from your file system backup. Be sure that they are restored with the right ownership (the database system user, not !) and with the right permissions. If you are using tablespaces, you should verify that the symbolic links in were correctly restored.
Remove any files present in ; these came from the file system backup and are therefore probably obsolete rather than current. If you didn't archive at all, then recreate it with proper permissions, being careful to ensure that you re-establish it as a symbolic link if you had it set up that way before.
If you have unarchived WAL segment files that you saved in step 2, copy them into . (It is best to copy them, not move them, so you still have the unmodified files if a problem occurs and you have to start over.)
Create a recovery command file in the cluster data directory (see Chapter 26). You might also want to temporarily modify to prevent ordinary users from connecting until you are sure the recovery was successful.
Start the server. The server will go into recovery mode and proceed to read through the archived WAL files it needs. Should the recovery be terminated because of an external error, the server can simply be restarted and it will continue recovery. Upon completion of the recovery process, the server will rename to (to prevent accidentally re-entering recovery mode later) and then commence normal database operations.
Inspect the contents of the database to ensure you have recovered to the desired state. If not, return to step 1. If all is well, allow your users to connect by restoring to normal.
The key part of all this is to set up a recovery configuration file that describes how you want to recover and how far the recovery should run. You can use (normally located in the installation's directory) as a prototype. The one thing that you absolutely must specify in is the , which tells PostgreSQL how to retrieve archived WAL file segments. Like the , this is a shell command string. It can contain , which is replaced by the name of the desired log file, and , which is replaced by the path name to copy the log file to. (The path name is relative to the current working directory, i.e., the cluster's data directory.) Write if you need to embed an actual character in the command. The simplest useful command is something like:
restore_command = 'cp /mnt/server/archivedir/%f %p'which will copy previously archived WAL segments from the directory . Of course, you can use something much more complicated, perhaps even a shell script that requests the operator to mount an appropriate tape.
It is important that the command return nonzero exit status on failure. The command will be called requesting files that are not present in the archive; it must return nonzero when so asked. This is not an error condition. Not all of the requested files will be WAL segment files; you should also expect requests for files with a suffix of . Also be aware that the base name of the path will be different from ; do not expect them to be interchangeable.
WAL segments that cannot be found in the archive will be sought in ; this allows use of recent un-archived segments. However, segments that are available from the archive will be used in preference to files in .
Normally, recovery will proceed through all available WAL segments, thereby restoring the database to the current point in time (or as close as possible given the available WAL segments). Therefore, a normal recovery will end with a "file not found" message, the exact text of the error message depending upon your choice of . You may also see an error message at the start of recovery for a file named something like . This is also normal and does not indicate a problem in simple recovery situations; see Section 24.3.5 for discussion.
If you want to recover to some previous point in time (say, right before the junior DBA dropped your main transaction table), just specify the required stopping point in . You can specify the stop point, known as the "recovery target", either by date/time, named restore point or by completion of a specific transaction ID. As of this writing only the date/time and named restore point options are very usable, since there are no tools to help you identify with any accuracy which transaction ID to use.
Note: The stop point must be after the ending time of the base backup, i.e., the end time of . You cannot use a base backup to recover to a time when that backup was in progress. (To recover to such a time, you must go back to your previous base backup and roll forward from there.)
If recovery finds corrupted WAL data, recovery will halt at that point and the server will not start. In such a case the recovery process could be re-run from the beginning, specifying a "recovery target" before the point of corruption so that recovery can complete normally. If recovery fails for an external reason, such as a system crash or if the WAL archive has become inaccessible, then the recovery can simply be restarted and it will restart almost from where it failed. Recovery restart works much like checkpointing in normal operation: the server periodically forces all its state to disk, and then updates the file to indicate that the already-processed WAL data need not be scanned again.
24.3.5. Timelines
The ability to restore the database to a previous point in time creates some complexities that are akin to science-fiction stories about time travel and parallel universes. For example, in the original history of the database, suppose you dropped a critical table at 5:15PM on Tuesday evening, but didn't realize your mistake until Wednesday noon. Unfazed, you get out your backup, restore to the point-in-time 5:14PM Tuesday evening, and are up and running. In this history of the database universe, you never dropped the table. But suppose you later realize this wasn't such a great idea, and would like to return to sometime Wednesday morning in the original history. You won't be able to if, while your database was up-and-running, it overwrote some of the WAL segment files that led up to the time you now wish you could get back to. Thus, to avoid this, you need to distinguish the series of WAL records generated after you've done a point-in-time recovery from those that were generated in the original database history.
To deal with this problem, PostgreSQL has a notion of timelines. Whenever an archive recovery completes, a new timeline is created to identify the series of WAL records generated after that recovery. The timeline ID number is part of WAL segment file names so a new timeline does not overwrite the WAL data generated by previous timelines. It is in fact possible to archive many different timelines. While that might seem like a useless feature, it's often a lifesaver. Consider the situation where you aren't quite sure what point-in-time to recover to, and so have to do several point-in-time recoveries by trial and error until you find the best place to branch off from the old history. Without timelines this process would soon generate an unmanageable mess. With timelines, you can recover to any prior state, including states in timeline branches that you abandoned earlier.
Every time a new timeline is created, PostgreSQL creates a "timeline history" file that shows which timeline it branched off from and when. These history files are necessary to allow the system to pick the right WAL segment files when recovering from an archive that contains multiple timelines. Therefore, they are archived into the WAL archive area just like WAL segment files. The history files are just small text files, so it's cheap and appropriate to keep them around indefinitely (unlike the segment files which are large). You can, if you like, add comments to a history file to record your own notes about how and why this particular timeline was created. Such comments will be especially valuable when you have a thicket of different timelines as a result of experimentation.
The default behavior of recovery is to recover along the same timeline that was current when the base backup was taken. If you wish to recover into some child timeline (that is, you want to return to some state that was itself generated after a recovery attempt), you need to specify the target timeline ID in . You cannot recover into timelines that branched off earlier than the base backup.
24.3.6. Tips and Examples
Some tips for configuring continuous archiving are given here.
24.3.6.1. Standalone Hot Backups
It is possible to use PostgreSQL's backup facilities to produce standalone hot backups. These are backups that cannot be used for point-in-time recovery, yet are typically much faster to backup and restore than pg_dump dumps. (They are also much larger than pg_dump dumps, so in some cases the speed advantage might be negated.)
As with base backups, the easiest way to produce a standalone hot backup is to use the pg_basebackup tool. If you include the parameter when calling it, all the transaction log required to use the backup will be included in the backup automatically, and no special action is required to restore the backup.
If more flexibility in copying the backup files is needed, a lower level process can be used for standalone hot backups as well. To prepare for low level standalone hot backups, set to (or ), to , and set up an that performs archiving only when a switch file exists. For example:
archive_command = 'test ! -f /var/lib/pgsql/backup_in_progress || (test ! -f /var/lib/pgsql/archive/%f && cp %p /var/lib/pgsql/archive/%f)'This command will perform archiving when exists, and otherwise silently return zero exit status (allowing PostgreSQL to recycle the unwanted WAL file).
With this preparation, a backup can be taken using a script like the following:
touch /var/lib/pgsql/backup_in_progress psql -c "select pg_start_backup('hot_backup');" tar -cf /var/lib/pgsql/backup.tar /var/lib/pgsql/data/ psql -c "select pg_stop_backup();" rm /var/lib/pgsql/backup_in_progress tar -rf /var/lib/pgsql/backup.tar /var/lib/pgsql/archive/The switch file is created first, enabling archiving of completed WAL files to occur. After the backup the switch file is removed. Archived WAL files are then added to the backup so that both base backup and all required WAL files are part of the same tar file. Please remember to add error handling to your backup scripts.
24.3.6.2. Compressed Archive Logs
If archive storage size is a concern, you can use gzip to compress the archive files:
archive_command = 'gzip < %p > /var/lib/pgsql/archive/%f'You will then need to use gunzip during recovery:
restore_command = 'gunzip < /mnt/server/archivedir/%f > %p'24.3.6.3. Scripts
Many people choose to use scripts to define their , so that their entry looks very simple:
archive_command = 'local_backup_script.sh "%p" "%f"'Using a separate script file is advisable any time you want to use more than a single command in the archiving process. This allows all complexity to be managed within the script, which can be written in a popular scripting language such as bash or perl.
Examples of requirements that might be solved within a script include:
Copying data to secure off-site data storage
Batching WAL files so that they are transferred every three hours, rather than one at a time
Interfacing with other backup and recovery software
Interfacing with monitoring software to report errors
Tip: When using an script, it's desirable to enable logging_collector. Any messages written to stderr from the script will then appear in the database server log, allowing complex configurations to be diagnosed easily if they fail.
24.3.7. Caveats
At this writing, there are several limitations of the continuous archiving technique. These will probably be fixed in future releases:
Operations on hash indexes are not presently WAL-logged, so replay will not update these indexes. This will mean that any new inserts will be ignored by the index, updated rows will apparently disappear and deleted rows will still retain pointers. In other words, if you modify a table with a hash index on it then you will get incorrect query results on a standby server. When recovery completes it is recommended that you manually REINDEX each such index after completing a recovery operation.
If a CREATE DATABASE command is executed while a base backup is being taken, and then the template database that the copied is modified while the base backup is still in progress, it is possible that recovery will cause those modifications to be propagated into the created database as well. This is of course undesirable. To avoid this risk, it is best not to modify any template databases while taking a base backup.
CREATE TABLESPACE commands are WAL-logged with the literal absolute path, and will therefore be replayed as tablespace creations with the same absolute path. This might be undesirable if the log is being replayed on a different machine. It can be dangerous even if the log is being replayed on the same machine, but into a new data directory: the replay will still overwrite the contents of the original tablespace. To avoid potential gotchas of this sort, the best practice is to take a new base backup after creating or dropping tablespaces.
It should also be noted that the default format is fairly bulky since it includes many disk page snapshots. These page snapshots are designed to support crash recovery, since we might need to fix partially-written disk pages. Depending on your system hardware and software, the risk of partial writes might be small enough to ignore, in which case you can significantly reduce the total volume of archived logs by turning off page snapshots using the full_page_writes parameter. (Read the notes and warnings in Chapter 29 before you do so.) Turning off page snapshots does not prevent use of the logs for PITR operations. An area for future development is to compress archived WAL data by removing unnecessary page copies even when is on. In the meantime, administrators might wish to reduce the number of page snapshots included in WAL by increasing the checkpoint interval parameters as much as feasible.
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