[check_postgres] check_hot_standby_delay question

[bricklen]

Hi there,

First of all, let me congratulate and thank you for a great set of
tools -- we use Bucardo tool and the Nagios checks extensively in our
organization, Neverblue Media.

We upgraded our production databases to postgresql 9 a couple weeks
ago, and set up a Hot Standby system shortly after. The question I
have relates to the "check_hot_standby_delay" check: I can't seem to
puzzle out what the return value corresponds to when it calculates the
delta between the master and the slave WAL offsets. Is the returned
value the number of transactions that have not yet been applied to the
standby? Microseconds? I've checked out transaction IDs, and the
numbers I'm getting don't seem to be anywhere in the same range as the
return value from the check.

Cheers!

Bricklen Anderson