blocking on sending WAL segments

[adewolff]

I'm trying to backup my postgres 9.6 server to AWS S3.
When running wal-e backup-push, I get an error stating blocking on sending WAL segments. As per the hint to check archive_command, I ran wal-e wal-push. This gave the error:
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/postgresql/9.6/archive_status'.

I tried creating the directory 9.6/archive_status directory, which now results in the following traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "src/gevent/greenlet.py", line 716, in gevent._greenlet.Greenlet.run
  File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/worker/upload.py", line 53, in __call__
    self.gpg_key_id)
  File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/worker/worker_util.py", line 33, in do_lzop_put
    open(local_path, 'rb'), tf, gpg_key=gpg_key):
IsADirectoryError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: '/etc/postgresql/9.6/main'
2019-01-19T21:32:03Z <Greenlet "Greenlet-0" at 0x7f34f2c27a48: <wal_e.worker.upload.WalUploader object at 0x7f34f2bab470>(<wal_e.worker.pg.wal_transfer.WalSegment object at)> failed with IsADirectoryError

wal_e.main   CRITICAL MSG: An unprocessed exception has avoided all error handling
        DETAIL: Traceback (most recent call last):
          File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/cmd.py", line 666, in main
            concurrency=args.pool_size)
          File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/operator/backup.py", line 283, in wal_archive
            group.join()
          File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/worker/pg/wal_transfer.py", line 144, in join
            raise val
          File "src/gevent/greenlet.py", line 716, in gevent._greenlet.Greenlet.run
          File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/worker/upload.py", line 53, in __call__
            self.gpg_key_id)
          File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/worker/worker_util.py", line 33, in do_lzop_put
            open(local_path, 'rb'), tf, gpg_key=gpg_key):
        IsADirectoryError: [Errno 21] Is a directory: '/etc/postgresql/9.6/main'

However, doing a touch 9.6/archive_status results in the following error:

DETAIL: Traceback (most recent call last):
          File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/cmd.py", line 666, in main
            concurrency=args.pool_size)
          File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/operator/backup.py", line 273, in wal_archive
            other_segment = next(seg_stream)
          File "/var/lib/postgresql/.local/lib/python3.5/site-packages/wal_e/worker/pg/wal_transfer.py", line 70, in from_ready_archive_status
            statuses = os.listdir(status_dir)
        NotADirectoryError: [Errno 20] Not a directory: '/etc/postgresql/9.6/archive_status'

I've set up my postgresql.conf exactly as instructed in the README. How should I go about fixing this?