The {[project]} Configuration Reference details all configuration options. can be used entirely with command-line parameters but a configuration file is more practical for installations that are complex or set a lot of options. The default location for the configuration file is /etc/pgbackrest.conf. The log section defines logging-related settings. IMPORTANT NOTE: Trace-level logging may expose secrets such as keys and passwords. Use with caution! Level for file logging. The following log levels are supported:
  • off - No logging at all (not recommended)
  • error - Log only errors
  • warn - Log warnings and errors
  • info - Log info, warnings, and errors
  • detail - Log detail, info, warnings, and errors
  • debug - Log debug, detail, info, warnings, and errors
  • trace - Log trace (very verbose debugging), debug, info, warnings, and errors
debug
Level for console logging. The following log levels are supported:
  • off - No logging at all (not recommended)
  • error - Log only errors
  • warn - Log warnings and errors
  • info - Log info, warnings, and errors
  • detail - Log detail, info, warnings, and errors
  • debug - Log debug, detail, info, warnings, and errors
  • trace - Log trace (very verbose debugging), debug, info, warnings, and errors
error
Level for stderr logging. Specifies which log levels will output to stderr rather than stdout (specified by log-level-console). The timestamp and process will not be output to stderr. The following log levels are supported:
  • off - No logging at all (not recommended)
  • error - Log only errors
  • warn - Log warnings and errors
  • info - Log info, warnings, and errors
  • detail - Log detail, info, warnings, and errors
  • debug - Log debug, detail, info, warnings, and errors
  • trace - Log trace (very verbose debugging), debug, info, warnings, and errors
error
Path where log files are stored. The log path provides a location for to store log files. Note that if log-level-file=none then no log path is required. /backup/db/log Enable timestamp in logging. Enables the timestamp in console and file logging. This option is disabled in special situations such as generating documentation. n
The general section defines options that are common for many commands. Buffer size for file operations. Set the buffer size used for copy, compress, and uncompress functions. A maximum of 3 buffers will be in use at a time per process. An additional maximum of 256K per process may be used for zlib buffers. 16384 - 8388608 32768 Path to ssh client executable. Use a specific SSH client when an alternate is desired or the ssh executable is not in $PATH. /usr/bin/ssh Use gzip file compression. Backup files are compatible with command-line gzip tools. n Compression level for stored files. Sets the zlib level to be used for file compression when compress=y. 0-9 9 Compression level for network transfer when compress=n. Sets the zlib level to be used for protocol compression when compress=n and the database cluster is not on the same host as the backup. Protocol compression is used to reduce network traffic but can be disabled by setting compress-level-network=0. When compress=y the compress-level-network setting is ignored and compress-level is used instead so that the file is only compressed once. SSH compression is always disabled. 0-9 1 Database query timeout. Sets the timeout, in seconds, for queries against the database. This includes the pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() functions which can each take a substantial amount of time. Because of this the timeout should be kept high unless you know that these functions will return quickly (i.e. if you have set startfast=y and you know that the database cluster will not generate many WAL segments during the backup). 600 Path where lock files are stored. The lock path provides a location for to create lock files to prevent conflicting operations from being run concurrently. /backup/db/lock Use a neutral umask. Sets the umask to 0000 so modes in the repository are created in a sensible way. The default directory mode is 0750 and default file mode is 0640. The lock and log directories set the directory and file mode to 0770 and 0660 respectively. To use the executing user's umask instead specify neutral-umask=n in the config file or --no-neutral-umask on the command line. n Path where WAL segments are spooled during async archiving. When asynchronous archiving is enabled needs a local directory to store WAL segments before they are compressed and moved to the repository. Depending on the volume of WAL generated this directory could become very large so be sure to plan accordingly. The archive-queue-max option can be used to limit the amount of WAL that will be spooled locally. /backup/db/spool Path of Perl binary. Path of the Perl binary if /usr/bin/env perl won't work. /usr/bin/perl Max processes to use for compress/transfer. Each process will perform compression and transfer to make the command run faster, but don't set process-max so high that it impacts database performance. 4 Protocol timeout. Sets the timeout, in seconds, that the local or remote process will wait for a new message to be received on the protocol layer. This prevents processes from waiting indefinitely for a message. The protocol-timeout option must be greater than the db-timeout option. 630 The repository section defines options used to configure the repository. Indexing: All repo- options are indexed to allow for configuring multiple repositories, though only a single repository is currently supported. For example, the repository is configured with the repo1-path, repo1-host, etc. options. Repository host when operating remotely via SSH. Make sure that trusted SSH authentication is configured between the host and the repository host. When backing up and archiving to a locally mounted filesystem this setting is not required. repo1.domain.com exe path on the repository host. Required only if the path to is different on the local and repository hosts. If not defined, the repository host exe path will be set the same as the local exe path. same as local /usr/lib/backrest/bin/pgbackrest repository host configuration file. Sets the location of the configuration file on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration file is in a different location than the local configuration file. /etc/pgbackrest_backup.conf Repository host user when repo-host is set. Defines the user that will be used for operations on the repository host. Preferably this is not the postgres user but rather some other user like pgbackrest. If runs on the repository host the postgres user can be placed in the pgbackrest group so it has read permissions on the repository without being able to damage the contents accidentally. backup-user Repository host port when repo-host is set. Use this option to specify a non-default port for the repository host protocol. Currently only SSH is supported 25 Hardlink files between backups in the repository. Enable hard-linking of files in differential and incremental backups to their full backups. This gives the appearance that each backup is a full backup at the file-system level. Be careful, though, because modifying files that are hard-linked can affect all the backups in the set. y Path where backups and archive are stored. The repository is where stores backups and archives WAL segments. It may be difficult to estimate in advance how much space you'll need. The best thing to do is take some backups then record the size of different types of backups (full/incr/diff) and measure the amount of WAL generated per day. This will give you a general idea of how much space you'll need, though of course requirements will likely change over time as your database evolves. /backup/db/backrest S3 repository access key. AWS key used to access this bucket. AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE S3 repository secret access key. AWS secret key used to access this bucket. wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEY S3 repository bucket. S3 bucket used to store the repository. repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other AWS generated content can also be stored in the bucket. pg-backup S3 SSL CA File. Use a CA file other than the system default. /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt S3 SSL CA Path. Use a CA path other than the system default. /etc/pki/tls/certs S3 repository endpoint. The AWS end point should be valid for the selected region. s3.amazonaws.com S3 repository host. Connect to a host other than the end point. This is typically used for testing. 127.0.0.1 S3 repository region. The AWS region where the bucket was created. us-east-1 Verify S3 server certificate. Disables verification of the S3 server certificate. This should only be used for testing or other scenarios where a certificate has been self-signed. n Type of storage used for the repository. The following repository types are supported:
  • cifs - Like posix, but disables links and directory fsyncs
  • posix - Posix-compliant file systems
  • s3 - AWS Simple Storage Service
cifs
Cipher used to encrypt the repository. The following repository types are supported:
  • none - The repository is not encrypted
  • aes-256-cbc - Advanced Encryption Standard with 256 bit key length
none aes-256-cbc
Repository cipher passphrase. Passphrase used to encrypt/decrypt files of the repository. zWaf6XtpjIVZC5444yXB+cgFDFl7MxGlgkZSaoPvTGirhPygu4jOKOXf9LO4vjfO
The backup section defines settings related to backup. Check that WAL segments are in the archive before backup completes. Checks that all WAL segments required to make the backup consistent are present in the WAL archive. It's a good idea to leave this as the default unless you are using another method for archiving. This option must be enabled if archive-copy is enabled. n Copy WAL segments needed for consistency to the backup. This slightly paranoid option protects against corruption in the WAL segment archive by storing the WAL segments required for consistency directly in the backup. WAL segments are still stored in the archive so this option will use additional space. On restore, the WAL segments will be present in pg_xlog/pg_wal and will use them in preference to calling the restore_command. The archive-check option must be enabled if archive-copy is enabled. y Backup from the standby cluster. Enable backup from standby to reduce load on the primary cluster. This option requires that both the primary and standby hosts be configured. y Validate data page checksums. Directs to validate all data page checksums while backing up a cluster. This option will be automatically enabled when the required C library is present and checksums are enabled on the cluster. Failures in checksum validation will not abort a backup. Rather, warnings will be emitted in the log (and to the console with default settings) and the list of invalid pages will be stored in the backup manifest. n Manifest save threshold during backup. Defines how often the manifest will be saved during a backup (in bytes). Saving the manifest is important because it stores the checksums and allows the resume function to work efficiently. The actual threshold used is 1% of the backup size or manifest-save-threshold, whichever is greater. 5368709120 Allow resume of failed backup. Defines whether the resume feature is enabled. Resume can greatly reduce the amount of time required to run a backup after a previous backup of the same type has failed. It adds complexity, however, so it may be desirable to disable in environments that do not require the feature. n Force a checkpoint to start backup quickly. Forces a checkpoint (by passing y to the fast parameter of pg_start_backup()) so the backup begins immediately. Otherwise the backup will start after the next regular checkpoint. This feature only works in >= 8.4. y Stop prior failed backup on new backup. This will only be done if an exclusive advisory lock can be acquired to demonstrate that the prior failed backup process has really stopped. This feature relies on pg_is_in_backup() so only works on >= 9.3. The setting is disabled by default because it assumes that is the only process doing exclusive online backups. It depends on an advisory lock that only sets so it may abort other processes that do exclusive online backups. Note that base_backup and pg_dump are safe to use with this setting because they do not call pg_start_backup() so are not exclusive. y The archive section defines parameters when doing async archiving. This means that the archive files will be stored locally, then a background process will pick them and move them to the backup. Archive WAL segments asynchronously. WAL segments will be copied to the local repo, then a process will be forked to compress the segment and transfer it to the remote repo if configured. Control will be returned to as soon as the WAL segment is copied locally. y Limit size (in bytes) of the archive queue. After the limit is reached, the following will happen:
  1. will notify that the WAL was successfully archived, then DROP IT.
  2. A warning will be output to the Postgres log.
If this occurs then the archive log stream will be interrupted and PITR will not be possible past that point. A new backup will be required to regain full restore capability. In asynchronous mode the entire queue will be dropped to prevent spurts of WAL getting through before the queue limit is exceeded again. The purpose of this feature is to prevent the log volume from filling up at which point Postgres will stop completely. Better to lose the backup than have go down.
1073741824
Archive timeout. Set maximum time, in seconds, to wait for each WAL segment to reach the archive repository. The timeout applies to the check and backup commands when waiting for WAL segments required for backup consistency to be archived. 30
The restore section defines settings used for restoring backups. Restore only specified databases. This feature allows only selected databases to be restored. Databases not specifically included will be restored as sparse, zeroed files to save space but still allow to perform recovery. After recovery the databases that were not included will not be accessible but can be removed with the drop database command. Note that built-in databases (template0, template1, and postgres) are always restored. The {[dash]}-db-include option can be passed multiple times to specify more than one database to include. db_main Restore all symlinks. By default symlinked directories and files are restored as normal directories and files in $PGDATA. This is because it may not be safe to restore symlinks to their original destinations on a system other than where the original backup was performed. This option restores all the symlinks just as they were on the original system where the backup was performed. y Modify the destination of a symlink. Allows the destination file or path of a symlink to be changed on restore. This is useful for restoring to systems that have a different storage layout than the original system where the backup was generated. pg_xlog=/data/xlog Set an option in recovery.conf. See http://www.postgresql.org/docs/X.X/static/recovery-config.html for details on recovery.conf options (replace X.X with your version). This option can be used multiple times. Note: The restore_command option will be automatically generated but can be overridden with this option. Be careful about specifying your own restore_command as is designed to handle this for you. Target Recovery options (recovery_target_name, recovery_target_time, etc.) are generated automatically by and should not be set with this option. Since does not start after writing the recovery.conf file, it is always possible to edit/check recovery.conf before manually restarting. primary_conninfo=db.mydomain.com Restore a tablespace into the specified directory. Moves a tablespace to a new location during the restore. This is useful when tablespace locations are not the same on a replica, or an upgraded system has different mount points. Since 9.2 tablespace locations are not stored in pg_tablespace so moving tablespaces can be done with impunity. However, moving a tablespace to the data_directory is not recommended and may cause problems. For more information on moving tablespaces http://www.databasesoup.com/2013/11/moving-tablespaces.html is a good resource. ts_01=/db/ts_01 Restore all tablespaces into the specified directory. By default tablespaces are restored into their original locations and while this behavior can be modified by with the tablespace-map open it is sometime preferable to remap all tablespaces to a new directory all at once. This is particularly useful for development or staging systems that may not have the same storage layout as the original system where the backup was generated. The path specified will be the parent path used to create all the tablespaces in the backup. /data/tablespace The expire section defines how long backups will be retained. Expiration only occurs when the number of complete backups exceeds the allowed retention. In other words, if retention-full is set to 2, then there must be 3 complete backups before the oldest will be expired. Make sure you always have enough space for retention + 1 backups. Number of full backups to retain. When a full backup expires, all differential and incremental backups associated with the full backup will also expire. When the option is not defined a warning will be issued. If indefinite retention is desired then set the option to the max value. 2 Number of differential backups to retain. When a differential backup expires, all incremental backups associated with the differential backup will also expire. When not defined all differential backups will be kept until the full backups they depend on expire. 3 Backup type for WAL retention. If set to full will keep archive logs for the number of full backups defined by retention-archive. If set to diff (differential) will keep archive logs for the number of full and differential backups defined by retention-archive, meaning if the last backup taken was a full backup, it will be counted as a differential for the purpose of retention. If set to incr (incremental) will keep archive logs for the number of full, differential, and incremental backups defined by retention-archive. It is recommended that this setting not be changed from the default which will only expire WAL in conjunction with expiring full backups. diff Number of backups worth of continuous WAL to retain. Note that the WAL segments required to make a backup consistent are always retained until the backup is expired regardless of how this option is configured. If this value is not set, then the archive to expire will default to the retention-full (or retention-diff) value corresponding to the retention-archive-type if set to full (or diff). This will ensure that WAL is only expired for backups that are already expired. This option must be set if retention-archive-type is set to incr. If disk space is at a premium, then this setting, in conjunction with retention-archive-type, can be used to aggressively expire WAL segments. However, doing so negates the ability to perform PITR from the backups with expired WAL and is therefore not recommended. 2 A stanza defines the backup configuration for a specific database cluster. The stanza section must define the database cluster path and host/user if the database cluster is remote. Also, any global configuration sections can be overridden to define stanza-specific settings. Indexing: All pg- options are indexed to allow for configuring multiple hosts. For example, a single master is configured with the pg1-path, pg1-host, etc. options. If a standby is configured then index the pg- options as pg2- (e.g. pg2-host, pg2-path, etc). exe path on the host. Required only if the path to is different on the local and hosts. If not defined, the database host exe path will be set the same as the local exe path. same as local /usr/lib/backrest/bin/pgbackrest database host configuration file. Sets the location of the configuration file on the host. This is only required if the host configuration file is in a different location than the local configuration file. /etc/pgbackrest_db.conf host for operating remotely via SSH. Used for backups where the host is different from the backup host. db.domain.com host logon user when pg-host is set. This user will also own the remote process and will initiate connections to . For this to work correctly the user should be the database cluster owner which is generally postgres, the default. db_owner data directory. This should be the same as the data_directory setting in postgresql.conf. Even though this value can be read from postgresql.conf or it is prudent to set it in case those resources are not available during a restore or offline backup scenario. The pg-path option is tested against the value reported by on every online backup so it should always be current. /data/db port. Port that is running on. This usually does not need to be specified as most clusters run on the default port. 6543 unix socket path. The unix socket directory that was specified when was started. will automatically look in the standard location for your OS so there is usually no need to specify this setting unless the socket directory was explicitly modified with the unix_socket_directory setting in postgresql.conf. /var/run/postgresql host port when pg-host is set. Use this option to specify a non-default port for the host protocol. Currently only SSH is supported 25
The {[project]} Command Reference details all commands and options. Commands are used to execute the various functions. Here the command options are listed exhaustively, that is, each option applicable to a command is listed with that command even if it applies to one or more other commands. This includes all the options that may also configured in pgbackrest.conf. Non-boolean options configured in pgbackrest.conf can be reset to default on the command-line by using the no- prefix. This feature may be used to restore a backup directly on a backup host. Normally, will error because it can see that the database host is remote and restores cannot be done remotely. By adding --no-pg1-host on the command-line, will ignore the remote database host and restore locally. It may be necessary to pass a new --pg-path to force the restore to happen in a specific path, i.e. not the path used on the database host. If the no- prefix is used with a boolean option then the option is set to false. Backup a database cluster. does not have a built-in scheduler so it's best to run it from cron or some other scheduling mechanism. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db --type=full backup Run a full backup on the db stanza. --type can also be set to incr or diff for incremental or differential backups. However, if no full backup exists then a full backup will be forced even if incr or diff is requested. Push a WAL segment to the archive. The WAL segment may be pushed immediately to the archive or stored locally depending on the value of archive-async {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db archive-push %p Accepts a WAL segment from and archives it in the repository defined by repo-path. %p is how specifies the location of the WAL segment to be archived. Get a WAL segment from the archive. WAL segments are required for restoring a cluster or maintaining a replica. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db archive-get %f %p Retrieves a WAL segment from the repository. This command is used in recovery.conf to restore a backup, perform PITR, or as an alternative to streaming for keeping a replica up to date. %f is how specifies the WAL segment it needs and %p is the location where it should be copied. Check the configuration. The check command validates that and the archive_command setting are configured correctly for archiving and backups. It detects misconfigurations, particularly in archiving, that result in incomplete backups because required WAL segments did not reach the archive. The command can be run on the database or the backup host. The command may also be run on the standby host, however, since pg_switch_xlog()/pg_switch_wal() cannot be performed on the standby, the command will only test the repository configuration. Note that pg_create_restore_point('pgBackRest Archive Check') and pg_switch_xlog()/pg_switch_wal() are called to force to archive a WAL segment. Restore points are only supported in >= 9.1 so for older versions the check command may fail if there has been no write activity since the last log rotation, therefore it is recommended that activity be generated by the user if there have been no writes since the last WAL switch before running the check command. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db check Expire backups that exceed retention. does backup rotation but is not concerned with when the backups were created. If two full backups are configured for retention, will keep two full backups no matter whether they occur two hours or two weeks apart. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db expire Expire (rotate) any backups that exceed the defined retention. Expiration is run automatically after every successful backup, so there is no need to run this command separately unless you have reduced retention, usually to free up some space. Restore a database cluster. This command is generally run manually, but there are instances where it might be automated. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db --type=name --target=release restore Restores the latest database cluster backup and then recovers to the release restore point. Retrieve information about backups. The info command operates on a single stanza or all stanzas. Text output is the default and gives a human-readable summary of backups for the stanza(s) requested. This format is subject to change with any release. For machine-readable output use --output=json. The JSON output contains far more information than the text output, however this feature is currently experimental so the format may change between versions. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db --output=json info Get information about backups in the db stanza. {[backrest-exe]} --output=json info Get information about backups for all stanzas in the repository. Get help. Three levels of help are provided. If no command is specified then general help will be displayed. If a command is specified then a full description of the command will be displayed along with a list of valid options. If an option is specified in addition to a command then the a full description of the option as it applies to the command will be displayed. {[backrest-exe]} help backup Get help for the backup command. {[backrest-exe]} help backup force Get help for the force option of the backup command. Allow processes to run. If the processes were previously stopped using the stop command then they can be started again using the start command. Note that this will not immediately start up any processes but they are allowed to run. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=main start Allows processes to run for the main stanza. Stop processes from running. Does not allow any new processes to run. By default running processes will be allowed to complete successfully. Use the --force option to terminate running processes. processes will return an error if they are run after the stop command completes. {[backrest-exe]} stop Stop new processes for all stanzas but allow any current process to complete. Get version. Displays installed version. {[backrest-exe]} version Get version. Create the required stanza data. The stanza-create command must be run on the host where the repository is located after the stanza has been configured in pgbackrest.conf. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db stanza-create Create the required data for the db stanza. Upgrade a stanza. Immediately after upgrading to a newer major version, the pg-path for all configurations must be set to the new database location and the stanza-upgrade run on the backup host. If the database is offline use the --no-online option. {[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db stanza-upgrade Upgrade the db stanza to a new version of . Delete a stanza. The stanza-delete command removes data in the repository associated with a stanza. Use this command with caution — it will permanently remove all backups and archives from the repository for the specified stanza. To delete a stanza:
  • Shut down the cluster associated with the stanza (or use --force to override).
  • Run the stop command on the backup host (the host where the repository is mounted).
  • Run the stanza-delete command on the backup host.
Once the command successfully completes, it is the responsibility of the user to remove the stanza from all configuration files.
{[backrest-exe]} --stanza=db stanza-delete Delete the db stanza repository.