Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where warnings were being emitted in place of lower priority log messages during backup from standby initialization. (Reported by Uspen.)
* Fixed an issue where some db-* options (e.g. db-port) were not being passed to remotes. (Reported by Uspen.)
Features:
* Exclude contents of pg_snapshots, pg_serial, pg_notify, and pg_dynshmem from backup since they are rebuilt on startup.
* Exclude pg_internal.init files from backup since they are rebuilt on startup.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue that could cause compression to abort on growing files. (Reported by Jesper St John, Aleksandr Rogozin.)
* Fixed an issue with keep-alives not being sent to the remote from the local process. (Reported by William Cox.)
Features:
* Up to seven standbys can be configured for backup from standby. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* PostgreSQL 10 support.
* Allow content-length (in addition to chunked encoding) when reading XML data to improve compatibility with third-party S3 gateways. (Suggested by Victor Gdalevich.)
Refactoring:
* Configuration rules are now pulled from the C library when present.
* Increase HTTP timeout for S3.
* Add HTTP retries to harden against transient S3 network errors.
Bug Fixes:
* The archive_status directory is now recreated on restore to support PostgreSQL 8.3 which does not recreate it automatically like more recent versions do. (Reported by Stephen Frost.)
* Fixed an issue that could cause the empty archive directory for an old PostgreSQL version to be left behind after a stanza-upgrade. (Fixed by Cynthia Shang.)
Features:
* Modified the info command (both text and JSON output) to display the archive ID and minimum/maximum WAL currently present in the archive for the current and prior, if any, database cluster version. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Added --backup-ssh-port and --db-ssh-port options to support non-default SSH ports. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
Refactoring:
* Retry when S3 returns an internal error (500).
* Add bIgnoreMissing parameter to Local->manifest().
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue that prevented tablespaces from being backed up on PostgreSQL ≤ 8.4.
* Fixed missing flag in C library build that resulted in a mismatched binary on 32-bit systems. (Reported by Adrian Vondendriesch.)
Features:
* Add s3-repo-ca-path and s3-repo-ca-file options to accommodate systems where CAs are not automatically found by IO::Socket::SSL, i.e. RHEL7, or to load custom CAs. (Suggested by Scott Frazer.)
Refactoring:
* Harden protocol handshake to handle race conditions.
* Fixed misleading error message when a file was opened for write in a missing directory.
* Change log level of hardlink logging to detail.
* Cast size in S3 manifest to integer.
* Rename Archive modules to remove redundancy.
* Improve S3 error reporting.
* Minor optimizations to package loads and ordering for archive-get and archive-push commands.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed the info command so the WAL archive min/max displayed is for the current database version. (Fixed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Fixed the backup command so the backup-standby option is reset (and the backup proceeds on the master) if the standby is not configured and/or reachable. (Fixed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Fixed config warnings raised from a remote process causing errors in the master process. (Fixed by Cynthia Shang.)
Features:
* Amazon S3 repository support. (Reviewed by Cynthia Shang.)
Refactoring:
* Refactor storage layer to allow for new repository filesystems using drivers. (Reviewed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Refactor IO layer to allow for new compression formats, checksum types, and other capabilities using filters. (Reviewed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Move modules in Protocol directory in subdirectories.
* Move backup modules into Backup directory.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where read-only operations that used local worker processes (i.e. restore) were creating write locks that could interfere with parallel archive-push. (Reported by Jens Wilke.)
Features:
* Added the stanza-upgrade command to provide a mechanism for upgrading a stanza after upgrading to a new major version of PostgreSQL. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Added validation of pgbackrest.conf to display warnings if options are not valid or are not in the correct section. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
Refactoring:
* Simplify locking scheme. Now, only the master process will hold write locks (for archive-push and backup commands) and not all local and remote worker processes as before.
* Refactor Ini.pm to facilitate testing.
* Do not set timestamps of files in the backup directories to match timestamps in the cluster directory. This was originally done to enable backup resume, but that process is now implemented with checksums.
* Improved error message when the restore command detects the presence of postmaster.pid. (Suggested by Yogesh Sharma.)
* Renumber return codes between 25 and 125 to avoid PostgreSQL interpreting some as fatal signal exceptions. (Suggested by Yogesh Sharma.)
* The backup and restore commands no longer copy via temp files. In both cases the files are checksummed on resume so there's no danger of partial copies.
* Allow functions to accept optional parameters as a hash.
* Refactor File->list() and fileList() to accept optional parameters.
* Refactor backupLabel() and add unit tests.
* Silence some perl critic warnings. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where tables over 1GB would report page checksum warnings after the first segment. (Reported by Stephen Frost.)
* Fixed an issue where databases created with a non-default tablespace would raise bogus warnings about pg_filenode.map and pg_internal.init not being page aligned. (Reported by blogh.)
Refactoring:
* Improved the code and tests for fileManifest() to prevent a possible race condition when files are removed by the database while the manifest is being built.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed a regression introduced in v1.13 that could cause backups to fail if files were removed (e.g. tables dropped) while the manifest was being built. (Reported by Navid Golpayegani.)
Refactoring:
* Refactor FileCommon::fileManifest() and FileCommon::fileStat to be more modular to allow complete branch/statement level coverage testing.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where an archive-push error would not be retried and would instead return errors to PostgreSQL indefinitely (unless the .error file was manually deleted). (Reported by Jens Wilke.)
* Fixed a race condition in parallel archiving where creation of new paths generated an error when multiple processes attempted to do so at the same time. (Reported by Jens Wilke.)
Refactoring:
* Improved performance of wal archive min/max provided by the info command. (Suggested by Jens Wilke.)
* Documentation can now be built with reusable blocks to reduce duplication.
* Added ability to pass options to containers within the documentation.
* Add proper tag to slightly emphasize proper nouns.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The new implementation of asynchronous archiving no longer copies WAL to a separate queue. If there is any WAL left over in the old queue after upgrading to 1.13, it will be abandoned and not pushed to the repository.
To prevent this outcome, stop archiving by setting archive_command = false. Next, drain the async queue by running pgbackrest --stanza=[stanza-name] archive-push and wait for the process to complete. Check that the queue in [spool-path]/archive/[stanza-name]/out is empty. Finally, install 1.13 and restore the original archive_command.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The stanza-create command is not longer optional and must be executed before backup or archiving can be performed on a new stanza. Pre-existing stanzas do not require stanza-create to be executed.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed const assignment giving compiler warning in C library. (Fixed by Adrian Vondendriesch.)
* Fixed a few directory syncs that were missed for the --repo-sync option.
* Fixed an issue where a missing user/group on restore could cause an "uninitialized value" error in File->owner(). (Reported by Leonardo Avellar.)
* Fixed an issue where protocol mismatch errors did not output the expected value.
* Fixed a spurious archive-get log message that indicated an exit code of 1 was an abnormal termination.
Features:
* Improved, multi-process implementation of asynchronous archiving.
* Improved stanza-create command so that it can repair broken repositories in most cases and is robust enough to be made mandatory. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Improved check command to run on a standby, though only basic checks are done because pg_switch_xlog() cannot be executed on a replica. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Added archive and backup WAL ranges to the info command.
* Added warning to update pg_tablespace.spclocation when remapping tablespaces in PostgreSQL < 9.2. (Contributed by blogh.)
* Remove remote lock requirements for the archive-get, restore, info, and check commands since they are read-only operations. (Suggested by Michael Vitale.)
Refactoring:
* Refactor File and BackupCommon modules to improve test coverage.
* Return proper error code when unable to convert a relative path to an absolute path. (Suggested by Yogesh Sharma.)
* Log file banner is not output until the first log entry is written. (Suggested by Jens Wilke.)
* Moved File->manifest() into the FileCommon.pm module.
* Moved the Archive modules to the Archive directory and split the archive-get and archive-push commands into separate modules.
* Split the check command out of the Archive.pm module.
* Allow logging to be suppressed via logDisable() and logEnable().
* Allow for locks to be taken more than once in the same process without error.
* Lock directories can be created when more than one directory level is required.
* Clean up optionValid()/optionTest() logic in Lock.pm.
* Added Exception::exceptionCode() and Exception::exceptionMessage() to simplify error handling logic.
* Represent .gz extension with a constant.
* Allow empty files to be created with FileCommon::fileStringWrite() and use temp files to avoid partial reads.
* Refactor process IO and process master/minion code out from the common protocol code.
* Reduced the likelihood of torn pages causing a false positive in page checksums by filtering on start backup LSN.
* Remove Intel-specific optimization from C library build flags. (Contributed by Adrian Vondendriesch.)
* Removed --lock option. This option was introduced before the lock directory could be located outside the repository and is now obsolete.
* Added --log-timestamp option to allow timestamps to be suppressed in logging. This is primarily used to avoid filters in the automated documentation.
* Fixed alignment issues with multiline logging.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In prior releases it was possible to specify options on the command-line that were invalid for the current command without getting an error. An error will now be generated for invalid options so it is important to carefully check command-line options in your environment to prevent disruption.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where options that were invalid for the specified command could be provided on the command-line without generating an error. The options were ignored and did not cause any change in behavior, but it did lead to some confusion. Invalid options will now generate an error. (Reported by Nikhilchandra Kulkarni.)
* Fixed an issue where internal symlinks were not being created for tablespaces in the repository. This issue was only apparent when trying to bring up clusters in-place manually using filesystem snapshots and did not affect normal backup and restore.
* Fixed an issue that prevented errors from being output to the console before the logging system was initialized, i.e. while parsing options. Error codes were still being returned accurately so this would not have made a process look like it succeeded when it did not. (Reported by Adrian Vondendriesch.)
* Fixed an issue where the db-port option specified on the backup server would not be properly passed to the remote unless it was from the first configured database. (Reported by Michael Vitale.)
Features:
* Added the --checksum-page option to allow pgBackRest to validate page checksums in data files when checksums are enabled on PostgreSQL >= 9.3. Note that this functionality requires a C library which may not initially be available in OS packages. The option will automatically be enabled when the library is present and checksums are enabled on the cluster. (Suggested by Stephen Frost.)
* Added the --repo-link option to allow internal symlinks to be suppressed when the repository is located on a filesystem that does not support symlinks. This does not affect any pgBackRest functionality, but the convenience link latest will not be created and neither will internal tablespace symlinks, which will affect the ability to bring up clusters in-place manually using filesystem snapshots.
* Added the --repo-sync option to allow directory syncs in the repository to be disabled for file systems that do not support them, e.g. NTFS.
* Added a predictable log entry to signal that a command has completed successfully. For example a backup ends successfully with: INFO: backup command end: completed successfully. (Suggested by Jens Wilke.)
Refactoring:
* Abstracted code to determine which database cluster is the master and which are standbys. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Improved consistency and flexibility of the protocol layer by using JSON for all messages.
* File copy protocol now accepts a function that can do additional processing on the copy buffers and return a result to the calling process.
* Improved IO->bufferRead to always return requested number of bytes until EOF.
* For simplicity, the pg_control file is now copied with the rest of the files instead of by itself of at the end of the process. The backup command does not require this behavior and the restore copies to a temporary file which is renamed at the end of the restore.
* Simplified the result hash of File->manifest(), Db->tablespaceMapGet(), and Db->databaseMapGet().
* Improved errors returned from child processes by removing redundant error level and code.
* Code cleanup in preparation for improved stanza-create command. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Improved parameter/result logging in debug/trace functions.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where asynchronous archiving was transferring one file per execution instead of transferring files in batches. This regression was introduced in v1.09 and affected efficiency only, all WAL segments were correctly archived in asynchronous mode. (Reported by Stephen Frost.)
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where a backup could error if no changes were made to a database between backups and only pg_control changed.
* Fixed an issue where tablespace paths with the same prefix would cause an invalid link error. (Reported by Nikhilchandra Kulkarni.)
Features:
* Added the stanza-create command to formalize creation of stanzas in the repository. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
Refactoring:
* Removed extraneous use lib directives from Perl modules. (Suggested by Devrim Gündüz.)
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed missing variable replacements.
* Removed hard-coded host names from configuration file paths.
Documentation Features:
* Allow command-line length to be configured using cmd-line-len param.
* Added compact param to allow CSS to be embedded in HTML file.
* Added pretty param to produce HTML with proper indenting.
* Only generate HTML menu when required and don't require index page.
* Assign numbers to sections by default.
* VM mount points are now optional.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed the check command to prevent an error message from being logged if the backup directory does not exist. (Fixed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Fixed error message to properly display the archive command when an invalid archive command is detected. (Reported by Jason O'Donnell.)
* Fixed an issue where the async archiver would not be started if archive-push did not have enough space to queue a new WAL segment. This meant that the queue would never be cleared without manual intervention (such as calling archive-push directly). PostgreSQL now receives errors when there is not enough space to store new WAL segments but the async process will still be started so that space is eventually freed. (Reported by Jens Wilke.)
* Fixed a remote timeout that occurred when a local process generated checksums (during resume or restore) but did not copy files, allowing the remote to go idle. (Reported by Jens Wilke.)
Features:
* Non-exclusive backups will automatically be used on PostgreSQL 9.6.
* Added the cmd-ssh option to allow the ssh client to be specified. (Suggested by Jens Wilke.)
* Added the log-level-stderr option to control whether console log messages are sent to stderr or stdout. By default this is set to warn which represents a change in behavior from previous versions, even though it may be more intuitive. Setting log-level-stderr=off will preserve the old behavior. (Suggested by Sascha Biberhofer.)
* Set application_name to "pgBackRest [command]" for database connections. (Suggested by Jens Wilke.)
* Check that archive_mode is enabled when archive-check option enabled.
Refactoring:
* Clarified error message when unable to acquire pgBackRest advisory lock to make it clear that it is not a PostgreSQL backup lock. (Suggested by Jens Wilke.)
* pgBackRest version number included in command start INFO log output.
* Process ID logged for local process start/stop INFO log output.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where local processes were not disconnecting when complete and could later timeout. (Reported by Todd Vernick.)
* Fixed an issue where the protocol layer could timeout while waiting for WAL segments to arrive in the archive. (Reported by Todd Vernick.)
Refactoring:
* Cache file log output until the file is created to create a more complete log.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where tablespaces were copied from the master during standby backup.
* Fixed the check command so backup info is checked remotely and not just locally. (Fixed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Fixed an issue where retention-archive was not automatically being set when retention-archive-type=diff, resulting in a less aggressive than intended expiration of archive. (Fixed by Cynthia Shang.)
Features:
* Converted Perl threads to processes to improve compatibility and performance.
* Exclude contents of $PGDATA/pg_replslot directory so that replication slots on the master do not become part of the backup.
* The archive-start and archive-stop settings are now filled in backup.manifest even when archive-check=n.
* Additional warnings when archive retention settings may not have the intended effect or would allow indefinite retention. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Experimental support for non-exclusive backups in PostgreSQL 9.6 rc1. Changes to the control/catalog/WAL versions in subsequent release candidates may break compatibility but pgBackRest will be updated with each release to keep pace.
Refactoring:
* Refactor of protocol minions in preparation for the new local minion.
* Remove obsolete thread index variable from File() module.
* Changed temporary file names to consistently use the .pgbackrest.tmp extension even if the destination file is compressed or has an appended checksum.
* Improve ASSERT error handling, safely check eval blocks, and convert $@ to $EVAL_ERROR.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where a tablespace link that referenced another link would not produce an error, but instead skip the tablespace entirely. (Reported by Michael Vitale.)
* Fixed an issue where options that should not allow multiple values could be specified multiple times in pgbackrest.conf without an error being raised. (Reported by Michael Vitale.)
* Fixed an issue where the protocol-timeout option was not automatically increased when the db-timeout option was increased. (Reported by Todd Vernick.)
Features:
* Backup from a standby cluster. A connection to the primary cluster is still required to start/stop the backup and copy files that are not replicated, but the vast majority of files are copied from the standby in order to reduce load on the master.
* More flexible configuration for databases. Master and standby can both be configured on the backup server and pgBackRest will automatically determine which is the master. This means no configuration changes for backup are required after failing over from a master to standby when a separate backup server is used.
* Exclude directories during backup that are cleaned, recreated, or zeroed by PostgreSQL at startup. These include pgsql_tmp and pg_stat_tmp. The postgresql.auto.conf.tmp file is now excluded in addition to files that were already excluded: backup_label.old, postmaster.opts, postmaster.pid, recovery.conf, recovery.done.
* Experimental support for non-exclusive backups in PostgreSQL 9.6 beta4. Changes to the control/catalog/WAL versions in subsequent betas may break compatibility but pgBackRest will be updated with each release to keep pace.
Refactoring:
* Simplify protocol creation and identifying which host is local/remote.
* Removed all OP_* function constants that were used only for debugging, not in the protocol, and replaced with __PACKAGE__.
* Improvements in Db module: separated out connect() function, allow executeSql() calls that do not return data, and improve error handling.
* Improve error message for links that reference links in manifest build.
* Added hints to error message when relative paths are detected in archive-push or archive-get.
* Improve backup log messages to indicate which host the files are being copied from.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where tablespace paths that had $PGDATA as a substring would be identified as a subdirectories of $PGDATA even when they were not. Also hardened relative path checking a bit. (Reported by Chris Fort.)
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue an where an extraneous remote was created causing threaded backup/restore to possibly timeout and/or throw a lock conflict. (Reported by Michael Vitale.)
* Fixed an issue where db-path was not required for the check command so an assert was raised when it was missing rather than a polite error message. (Reported by Michael Vitale.)
* Fixed check command to throw an error when database version/id does not match that of the archive. (Fixed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Fixed an issue where a remote could try to start its own remote when the backup-host option was not present in pgbackrest.conf on the database server. (Reported by Lardière Sébastien.)
* Fixed an issue where the contents of pg_xlog were being backed up if the directory was symlinked. This didn't cause any issues during restore but was a waste of space.
* Fixed an invalid log() call in lock routines.
Features:
* Experimental support for non-exclusive backups in PostgreSQL 9.6 beta3. Changes to the control/catalog/WAL versions in subsequent betas may break compatibility but pgBackRest will be updated with each release to keep pace.
Refactoring:
* Enhancements to the protocol layer for improved reliability and error handling.
* All remote types now take locks. The exceptions date to when the test harness and pgBackRest were running in the same VM and no longer apply.
* Exceptions are now passed back from threads as messages when possible rather than raised directly.
* Temp files created during backup are now placed in the same directory as the target file.
* Output lock file name when a lock cannot be acquired to aid in debugging.
* Reduce calls to protocolGet() in backup/restore.
* Suppress banners on SSH protocol connections.
* Improved remote error messages to identify the host where the error was raised.
Bug Fixes:
* Fixed an issue where keep-alives could be starved out by lots of small files during multi-threaded backup. They were also completely absent from single/multi-threaded backup resume and restore checksumming. (Reported by Janice Parkinson, Chris Barber.)
* Fixed an issue where the expire command would refuse to run when explicitly called from the command line if the db-host option was set. This was not an issue when expire was run automatically after a backup (Reported by Chris Barber.)
* Fixed an issue where validation was being running on archive_command even when the archive-check option was disabled.
Features:
* Added check command to validate that pgBackRest is configured correctly for archiving and backups. (Contributed by Cynthia Shang.)
* Added the protocol-timeout option. Previously protocol-timeout was set as db-timeout + 30 seconds.
* Failure to shutdown remotes at the end of the backup no longer throws an exception. Instead a warning is generated that recommends a higher protocol-timeout.
* Experimental support for non-exclusive backups in PostgreSQL 9.6 beta2. Changes to the control/catalog/WAL versions in subsequent betas may break compatibility but pgBackRest will be updated with each release to keep pace.
Refactoring:
* The pg_xlogfile_name() function is no longer used to construct WAL filenames from LSNs. While this function is convenient it is not available on a standby. Instead, the archive is searched for the LSN in order to find the timeline. If due to some misadventure the LSN appears on multiple timelines then an error will be thrown, whereas before this condition would have passed unnoticed.
* Option handling is now far more strict. Previously it was possible for a command to use an option that was not explicitly assigned to it. This was especially true for the backup-host and db-host options which are used to determine locality.
* Improved handling of users/groups captured during backup that do not exist on the restore host. Also explicitly handle the case where user/group is not mapped to a name.
* Changed version variable to a constant. It had originally been designed to play nice with a specific packaging tool but that tool was never used.
* Fix usage of sprintf() due to new constraints in Perl 5.22. Parameters not referenced in the format string are no longer allowed. (Fixed by Adrian Vondendriesch.)
Release notes are now broken into sections so that bugs, features, and refactors are clearly delineated. An "Additional Notes" section has been added for changes to documentation and the test suite that do not affect the core code.
The change log was the last piece of documentation to be rendered in Markdown only. Wrote a converter so the document can be output by the standard renderers. The change log will now be located on the website and has been renamed to "Releases".
1) Started on a general markdown renderer
2) Internal links now work in PDF
3) Improvements to PDF styling
4) Some comment and formatting fixes
5) User guide edits.
