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Releases

Introduction

pgBackRest release numbers consist of two parts, major and minor. A major release may break compatibility with the prior major release, but v2 releases are fully compatible with v1 repositories and will accept all v1 options. Minor releases can include bug fixes and features but do not change the repository format and strive to avoid changing options and naming.

Documentation for the v1 release can be found here .

The notes for a release may also contain Additional Notes but changes in this section are only to documentation or the test suite and have no direct impact the on the pgBackRest codebase.

Current Stable Release

v2.07 Release Notes

Automatic Backup Checksum Delta
Released November 16, 2018
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix issue with archive-push-queue-max not being honored on connection error. ( Reported by Lardière Sébastien. )
  • Fix static WAL segment size used to determine if archive-push-queue-max has been exceeded.
  • Fix error after log file open failure when processing should continue. ( Reported by vthriller. )
Features:
  • Automatically enable backup checksum delta when anomalies (e.g. timeline switch) are detected. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Improvements:
  • Retry all S3 5xx errors rather than just 500 internal errors. ( Suggested by Craig A. James. )

Stable Releases

v2.06 Release Notes

Checksum Delta Backup and PostgreSQL 11 Support
Released October 15, 2018
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix missing missing URI encoding in S3 driver. ( Reported by Dan Farrell. )
  • Fix incorrect error message for duplicate options in configuration files. ( Reported by Jesper St John. )
  • Fix incorrectly reported error return in info logging. A return code of 1 from the archive-get was being logged as an error message at info level but otherwise worked correctly.
Features:
  • Add checksum delta for incremental backups which uses checksums rather than timestamps to determine if files have changed. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • PostgreSQL 11 support, including configurable WAL segment size.
Improvements:
  • Ignore all files in a linked tablespace directory except the subdirectory for the current version of PostgreSQL . Previously an error would be generated if other files were present and not owned by the PostgreSQL user.
  • Improve info command to display the stanza cipher type. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. Suggested by Douglas J Hunley. )
  • Improve support for special characters in filenames.
  • Allow delta option to be specified in the pgBackRest configuration file. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Improvements:
  • Use command in authorized_hosts to improve SSH security. ( Suggested by Stephen Frost, Magnus Hagander. )
  • List allowable values for the buffer-size option in the configuration reference. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. Suggested by Stéphane Schildknecht. )

v2.05 Release Notes

Environment Variable Options and Exclude Temporary/Unlogged Relations
Released August 31, 2018
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix issue where relative links in $PGDATA could be stored in the backup with the wrong path. This issue did not affect absolute links and relative tablespace links were caught by other checks. ( Reported by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Remove incompletely implemented online option from the check command. Offline operation runs counter to the purpose of this command, which is to check if archiving and backups are working correctly. ( Reported by Jason O'Donnell. )
  • Fix issue where errors raised in C were not logged when called from Perl. pgBackRest properly terminated with the correct error code but lacked an error message to aid in debugging. ( Reported by Douglas J Hunley. )
  • Fix issue when a boolean option (e.g. delta ) was specified more than once. ( Reported by Yogesh Sharma. )
Features:
  • Allow any option to be set in an environment variable. This includes options that previously could only be specified on the command line, e.g. stanza , and secret options that could not be specified on the command-line, e.g. repo1-s3-key-secret .
  • Exclude temporary and unlogged relation (table/index) files from backup. Implemented using the same logic as the patches adding this feature to PostgreSQL , 8694cc96 and 920a5e50 . Temporary relation exclusion is enabled in PostgreSQL ≥ 9.0 . Unlogged relation exclusion is enabled in PostgreSQL ≥ 9.1 , where the feature was introduced. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Allow arbitrary directories and/or files to be excluded from a backup. Misuse of this feature can lead to inconsistent backups so read the --exclude documentation carefully before using. ( Reviewed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Add log-subprocess option to allow file logging for local and remote subprocesses.
  • PostgreSQL 11 Beta 3 support.
Improvements:
  • Allow zero-size files in backup manifest to reference a prior manifest regardless of timestamp delta. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Improve asynchronous archive-get / archive-push performance by directly checking status files. ( Contributed by Stephen Frost. )
  • Improve error message when a command is missing the stanza option. ( Suggested by Sarah Conway. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fix invalid log level in log-path option reference. ( Reported by Camilo Aguilar. )
Documentation Improvements:
  • Stop trying to arrange contributors in release.xml by last/first name. Contributor names have always been presented in the release notes exactly as given, but we tried to assign internal IDs based on last/first name which can be hard to determine and ultimately doesn't make sense. Inspired by Christophe's PostgresOpen 2017 talk, Human Beings Do Not Have a Primary Key . ( Suggested by Christophe Pettus. )
Test Suite Improvements:
  • Error if LibC build is performed outside the test environment. LibC is no longer required for production builds.

v2.04 Release Notes

Critical Bug Fix for Backup Resume
Released July 5, 2018
IMPORTANT NOTE : This release fixes a critical bug in the backup resume feature. All resumed backups prior to this release should be considered inconsistent. A backup will be resumed after a prior backup fails, unless resume=n has been specified. A resumed backup can be identified by checking the backup log for the message aborted backup of same type exists, will be cleaned to remove invalid files and resumed . If the message exists, do not use this backup or any backup in the same set for a restore and check the restore logs to see if a resumed backup was restored. If so, there may be inconsistent data in the cluster.
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix critical bug in resume that resulted in inconsistent backups. A regression in v0.82 removed the timestamp comparison when deciding which files from the aborted backup to keep on resume. See note above for more details. ( Reported by David Youatt, Yogesh Sharma, Stephen Frost. )
  • Fix error in selective restore when only one user database exists in the cluster. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. Reported by Nj Baliyan. )
  • Fix non-compliant ISO-8601 timestamp format in S3 authorization headers. AWS and some gateways were tolerant of space rather than zero-padded hours while others were not. ( Fixed by Andrew Schwartz. )
Features:
  • PostgreSQL 11 Beta 2 support.
Improvements:
  • Improve the HTTP client to set content-length to 0 when not specified by the server. S3 (and gateways) always set content-length or transfer-encoding but HTTP 1.1 does not require it and proxies (e.g. HAProxy ) may not include either. ( Suggested by Adam K. Sumner. )
  • Set search_path = 'pg_catalog' on PostgreSQL connections. ( Suggested by Stephen Frost. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Improvements:
  • Create a new section to describe building pgBackRest and build on a separate host.
  • Add sample S3 policy to restrict bucket privileges. ( Suggested by Douglas J Hunley, Jason O'Donnell. )

v2.03 Release Notes

Single Executable to Deploy
Released May 22, 2018
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix potential buffer overrun in error message handling. ( Reported by Lætitia. )
  • Fix archive write lock being taken for the synchronous archive-get command. ( Reported by uspen. )
Improvements:
  • Embed exported C functions and Perl modules directly into the pgBackRest executable.
  • Use time_t instead of __time_t for better portability. ( Suggested by Nick Floersch. )
  • Print total runtime in milliseconds at command end.

v2.02 Release Notes

Parallel Asynchronous Archive Get and Configuration Includes
Released May 6, 2018
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix directory syncs running recursively when only the specified directory should be synced. ( Reported by Craig A. James. )
  • Fix archive-copy throwing path not found error for incr/diff backups. ( Reported by yummyliu, Vitaliy Kukharik. )
  • Fix failure in manifest build when two or more files in PGDATA are linked to the same directory. ( Reported by Vitaliy Kukharik. )
  • Fix delta restore failing when a linked file is missing.
  • Fix rendering of key/value and list options in help. ( Reported by Clinton Adams. )
Features:
  • Add asynchronous, parallel archive-get . This feature maintains a queue of WAL segments to help reduce latency when PostgreSQL requests a WAL segment with restore_command .
  • Add support for additional pgBackRest configuration files in the directory specified by the --config-include-path option. Add --config-path option for overriding the default base path of the --config and --config-include-path option. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Add repo-s3-token option to allow temporary credentials tokens to be configured. pgBackRest currently has no way to request new credentials so the entire command (e.g. backup , restore ) must complete before the credentials expire. ( Contributed by Yogesh Sharma. )
Improvements:
  • Update the archive-push-queue-max , manifest-save-threshold , and buffer-size options to accept values in KB , MB , GB , TB , or PB where the multiplier is a power of 1024 . ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Make backup/restore path sync more efficient. Scanning the entire directory can be very expensive if there are a lot of small tables. The backup manifest contains the path list so use it to perform syncs instead of scanning the backup/restore path.
  • Show command parameters as well as command options in initial info log message.
  • Rename archive-queue-max option to archive-push-queue-max to avoid confusion with the new archive-get-queue-max option. The old option name will continue to be accepted.
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Update docs with 32-bit support and caveats. 32-bit support was added in v1.26 . ( Reported by Viorel Tabara. )
Documentation Improvements:
  • Add monitoring examples using PostgreSQL and jq . ( Suggested by Stephen Frost, Brian Faherty. )
  • Add example of command section usage to archiving configuration. ( Suggested by Christophe Courtois. )
  • Remove documentation describing info --output=json as experimental.
  • Update out-of-date description for the spool-path option.
Test Suite Features:
  • Use lcov for C unit test coverage reporting. Switch from Devel::Cover because it would not report on branch coverage for reports converted from gcov . Incomplete branch coverage for a module now generates an error. Coverage of unit tests is not displayed in the report unless they are incomplete for either statement or branch coverage.

v2.01 Release Notes

Minor Bug Fixes and Improvements
Released March 19, 2018
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix --target-action and --recovery-option options being reported as invalid when restoring with --type=immediate . ( Reported by Brad Nicholson. )
  • Immediately error when a secure option (e.g. repo1-s3-key ) is passed on the command line. Since pgBackRest would not pass secure options on to sub-processes an obscure error was thrown. The new error is much clearer and provides hints about how to fix the problem. Update command documentation to omit secure options that cannot be specified on the command-line. ( Reported by Brad Nicholson. )
  • Fix issue passing --no-config to embedded Perl. ( Reported by Ibrahim Edib Kokdemir. )
  • Fix issue where specifying log-level-stderr > warn would cause a local / remote process to error on exit due to output found on stderr when none was expected. The max value for a local / remote process is now error since there is no reason for these processes to emit warnings. ( Reported by Clinton Adams. )
  • Fix manifest test in the check command when tablespaces are present. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. Reported by Thomas Flatley. )
Improvements:
  • Error when multiple arguments are set in the config file for an option that does not accept multiple arguments. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Remove extraneous sudo commands from src/Makefile . ( Contributed by Adrian Vondendriesch. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Improvements:
  • Show index in examples for indexed options, i.e. repo-* , pg-* . ( Suggested by Stephen Frost. )
  • Simplify table of contents on command page by only listing commands. ( Suggested by Stephen Frost. )
  • Remove references to the C library being optional.
Test Suite Features:
  • Add CentOS/RHEL package builds.
  • Use clang for static code analysis. Nothing found initially except for some functions that should have been marked __noreturn__ .

v2.00 Release Notes

Performance Improvements for Archive Push
Released February 23, 2018
Features:
  • The archive-push command is now partially coded in C which allows the PostgreSQL archive_command to run significantly faster when processing status messages from the asynchronous archive process. ( Reviewed by Cynthia Shang. )
Improvements:
  • Improve check command to verify that the backup manifest can be built. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Improve performance of HTTPS client. Buffering now takes the pending bytes on the socket into account (when present) rather than relying entirely on select() . In some instances the final bytes would not be flushed until the connection was closed.
  • Improve S3 delete performance. The constant S3_BATCH_MAX had been replaced with a hard-coded value of 2, probably during testing.
  • Allow any non-command-line option to be reset to default on the command-line. This allows options in pgbackrest.conf to be reset to default which reduces the need to write new configuration files for specific needs.
  • The C library is now required. This eliminates conditional loading and eases development of new library features.
  • The pgbackrest executable is now a C binary instead of Perl. This allows certain time-critical commands (like async archive-push ) to run more quickly.
  • Rename db-* options to pg-* and backup-* options to repo-* to improve consistency. repo-* options are now indexed although currently only one is allowed.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • All clusters in the documentation are initialized with checksums.
Documentation Improvements:
  • List deprecated option names in documentation and command-line help.
  • Clarify that S3 buckets must be created by the user. ( Suggested by David Youatt. )

v1.29 Release Notes

Critical Bug Fix for Backup Resume
Released July 5, 2018
IMPORTANT NOTE : This release fixes a critical bug in the backup resume feature. All resumed backups prior to this release should be considered inconsistent. A backup will be resumed after a prior backup fails, unless resume=n has been specified. A resumed backup can be identified by checking the backup log for the message aborted backup of same type exists, will be cleaned to remove invalid files and resumed . If the message exists, do not use this backup or any backup in the same set for a restore and check the restore logs to see if a resumed backup was restored. If so, there may be inconsistent data in the cluster.
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix critical bug in resume that resulted in inconsistent backups. A regression in v0.82 removed the timestamp comparison when deciding which files from the aborted backup to keep on resume. See note above for more details. ( Reported by David Youatt, Yogesh Sharma, Stephen Frost. )
  • Fix non-compliant ISO-8601 timestamp format in S3 authorization headers. AWS and some gateways were tolerant of space rather than zero-padded hours while others were not. ( Fixed by Andrew Schwartz. )
  • Fix directory syncs running recursively when only the specified directory should be synced. ( Reported by Craig A. James. )
  • Fix --target-action and --recovery-option options being reported as invalid when restoring with --type=immediate . ( Reported by Brad Nicholson. )
  • Fix archive-copy throwing path not found error for incr/diff backups. ( Reported by yummyliu, Vitaliy Kukharik. )
  • Fix failure in manifest build when two or more files in PGDATA are linked to the same directory. ( Reported by Vitaliy Kukharik. )
  • Fix delta restore failing when a linked file was missing.
  • Fix error in selective restore when only one user database exists in the cluster. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. Reported by Nj Baliyan. )
Improvements:
  • Improve the HTTP client to set content-length to 0 when not specified by the server. S3 (and gateways) always set content-length or transfer-encoding but HTTP 1.1 does not require it and proxies (e.g. HAProxy ) may not include either. ( Suggested by Adam K. Sumner. )
  • Improve performance of HTTPS client. Buffering now takes the pending bytes on the socket into account (when present) rather than relying entirely on select() . In some instances the final bytes would not be flushed until the connection was closed.
  • Improve S3 delete performance. The constant S3_BATCH_MAX had been replaced with a hard-coded value of 2, probably during testing.
  • Make backup/restore path sync more efficient. Scanning the entire directory can be very expensive if there are a lot of small tables. The backup manifest contains the path list so use it to perform syncs instead of scanning the backup/restore path. Remove recursive path sync functionality since it is no longer used.
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Update docs with 32-bit support and caveats. 32-bit support was added in v1.26 . ( Reported by Viorel Tabara. )
Documentation Improvements:
  • Clarify that S3 buckets must be created by the user. ( Suggested by David Youatt. )
  • Update out-of-date description for the spool-path option.

v1.28 Release Notes

Stanza Delete
Released February 1, 2018
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed inability to restore a single database contained in a tablespace using --db-include. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. Reported by Chiranjeevi Ravilla. )
  • Ensure latest db-id is selected on when matching archive.info to backup.info . This provides correct matching in the event there are system-id and db-version duplicates (e.g. after reverting a pg_upgrade ). ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. Reported by Adam K. Sumner. )
  • Fixed overly chatty error message when reporting an invalid command. ( Reported by Jason O'Donnell. )
Features:
  • Add stanza-delete command to cleanup unused stanzas. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. Suggested by Magnus Hagander. )
Improvements:
  • Improve stanza-create command so that it does not error when the stanza already exists. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Improvements:
  • Update stanza-create --force documentation to urge caution when using. ( Suggested by Jason O'Donnell. )

v1.27 Release Notes

Bug Fixes and Documentation
Released December 19, 2017
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue that suppressed locality errors for backup and restore . When a backup host is present, backups should only be allowed on the backup host and restores should only be allowed on the database host unless an alternate configuration is created that ignores the remote host. ( Reported by Lardière Sébastien. )
  • Fixed an issue where WAL was not expired on PostgreSQL 10. This was caused by a faulty regex that expected all PostgreSQL major versions to be X.X. ( Reported by Adam Brusselback. )
  • Fixed an issue where the --no-config option was not passed to child processes. This meant the child processes would still read the local config file and possibly cause unexpected behaviors.
  • Fixed info command to eliminate "db (prior)" output if no backups or archives exist for a prior version of the cluster. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. Reported by Stephen Frost. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Document the relationship between the archive-copy and archive-check options. ( Suggested by Markus Nullmeier. )
  • Improve archive-copy reference documentation.

v1.26 Release Notes

Repository Encryption
Released November 21, 2017
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue that could cause copying large manifests to fail during restore. ( Reported by Craig A. James. )
  • Fixed incorrect WAL offset for 32-bit architectures. ( Fixed by Javier Wilson. )
  • Fixed an issue retrieving WAL for old database versions. After a stanza-upgrade it should still be possible to restore backups from the previous version and perform recovery with archive-get . However, archive-get only checked the most recent db version/id and failed. Also clean up some issues when the same db version/id appears multiple times in the history. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. Reported by Clinton Adams. )
  • Fixed an issue with invalid backup groups being set correctly on restore. If the backup cannot map a group to a name it stores the group in the manifest as false then uses either the owner of $PGDATA to set the group during restore or failing that the group of the current user. This logic was not working correctly because the selected group was overwriting the user on restore leaving the group undefined and the user incorrectly set to the group. ( Reported by Jeff McCormick. )
  • Fixed an issue passing parameters to remotes. When more than one db was specified the path, port, and socket path would for db1 were passed no matter which db was actually being addressed. ( Reported by uspen. )
Features:
  • Repository encryption support. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang, David Steele. )
Improvements:
  • Disable gzip filter when --compress-level-network=0 . The filter was used with compress level set to 0 which added overhead without any benefit.
  • Inflate performance improvement for gzip filter.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Add template to improve initial information gathered for issue submissions. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Documentation Improvements:
  • Clarify usage of the archive-timeout option and describe how it is distinct from the PostgreSQL archive_timeout setting. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. Suggested by Keith Fiske. )
Test Suite Features:
  • Automated tests for 32-bit i386/i686 architecture.

v1.25 Release Notes

S3 Performance Improvements
Released October 24, 2017
Bug Fixes:
  • Fix custom settings for compress-level option being ignored. ( Reported by Jens Wilke. )
  • Remove error when overlapping timelines are detected. Overlapping timelines are valid in many Point-in-Time-Recovery (PITR) scenarios. ( Reported by blogh. )
  • Fix instances where database-id was not rendered as an integer in JSON info output. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. Reported by Jason O'Donnell. )
Features:
  • Improve performance of list requests on S3. Any beginning literal portion of a filter expression is used to generate a search prefix which often helps keep the request small enough to avoid rate limiting. ( Suggested by Mihail Shvein. )
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • Add I/O performance tests.

v1.24 Release Notes

New Backup Exclusions
Released September 28, 2017
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.
Improvements:
  • Open log file after async process is completely separated from the main process to prevent the main process from also logging to the file. ( Suggested by Jens Wilke. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Add passwordless SSH configuration.
Documentation Improvements:
  • Rename master to primary in documentation to align with PostgreSQL convention.

v1.23 Release Notes

Multiple Standbys and PostgreSQL 10 Support
Released September 3, 2017
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. )
Improvements:
  • Increase HTTP timeout for S3.
  • Add HTTP retries to harden against transient S3 network errors.
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed document generation to include section summaries on the Configuration page. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. )

v1.22 Release Notes

Fixed S3 Retry
Released August 9, 2017
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed authentication issue in S3 retry.

v1.21 Release Notes

Improved Info Output and SSH Port Option
Released August 8, 2017
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. )
Improvements:
  • Retry when S3 returns an internal error (500).
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fix description of --online based on the command context.
Documentation Features:
  • Add creation of /etc/pgbackrest.conf to manual installation instructions.
Documentation Improvements:
  • Move repository options into a separate section in command/command-line help. ( Suggested by Stephen Frost. )

v1.20 Release Notes

Critical 8.3/8.4 Bug Fix
Released June 27, 2017
IMPORTANT NOTE : PostgreSQL 8.3 and 8.4 installations utilizing tablespaces should upgrade immediately from any v1 release and run a full backup. A bug prevented tablespaces from being backed up on these versions only. PostgreSQL ≥ 9.0 is not affected.
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. )
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • Add documentation builds to CI.

v1.19 Release Notes

S3 Support
Released June 12, 2017
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 primary) 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. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Changed invalid max-archive-mb option in configuration reference to archive-queue-max .
  • Fixed missing sudo in installation section. ( Fixed by Lætitia. )

v1.18 Release Notes

Stanza Upgrade, Refactoring, and Locking Improvements
Released April 12, 2017
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. )
Improvements:
  • 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.
  • 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. )

v1.17 Release Notes

Page Checksum Bug Fix
Released March 13, 2017
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where newly initialized (but unused) pages would cause page checksum warnings. ( Reported by Stephen Frost. )

v1.16 Release Notes

Page Checksum Improvements, CI, and Package Testing
Released March 2, 2017
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. )
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • Continuous integration using travis-ci .
  • Automated builds of Debian packages for all supported distributions.

v1.15 Release Notes

Refactoring and Bug Fixes
Released February 13, 2017
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. )

v1.14 Release Notes

Refactoring and Bug Fixes
Released February 13, 2017
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. )
Improvements:
  • Improved performance of wal archive min/max provided by the info command. ( Suggested by Jens Wilke. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Updated async archiving documentation to more accurately describe how the new method works and how it differs from the old method. ( Suggested by Jens Wilke. )

v1.13 Release Notes

Parallel Archiving, Stanza Create, Improved Info and Check
Released February 5, 2017
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 GG 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. )
Improvements:
  • Log file banner is not output until the first log entry is written. ( Suggested by Jens Wilke. )
  • 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. )
  • Remove --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.
  • Return proper error code when unable to convert a relative path to an absolute path. ( Suggested by Yogesh Sharma. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added documentation to the User Guide for the process-max option. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )

v1.12 Release Notes

Page Checksums, Configuration, and Bug Fixes
Released December 12, 2016
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. )
Improvements:
  • 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.
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue that suppressed exceptions in PDF builds.
  • Fixed regression in section links introduced in v1.10 .
Documentation Features:
  • Added Retention to QuickStart section.

v1.11 Release Notes

Bug Fix for Asynchronous Archiving Efficiency
Released November 17, 2016
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. )

v1.10 Release Notes

Stanza Creation and Minor Bug Fixes
Released November 8, 2016
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. )
Improvements:
  • Removed extraneous use lib directives from Perl modules. ( Suggested by Devrim Gündüz. )

v1.09 Release Notes

9.6 Support, Configurability, and Bug Fixes
Released October 10, 2016
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.
Improvements:
  • 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.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added archive-timeout option documentation to the user guide. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )

v1.08 Release Notes

Bug Fixes and Log Improvements
Released September 14, 2016
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. )
Improvements:
  • Cache file log output until the file is created to create a more complete log.

v1.07 Release Notes

Thread to Process Conversion and Bug Fixes
Released September 7, 2016
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where tablespaces were copied from the primary 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 primary 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 . ( Suggested by Jens Wilke. )
  • 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.
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed minor documentation reproducibility issues related to binary paths.
Documentation Features:
  • Documentation for archive retention. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )

v1.06 Release Notes

Backup from Standby and Bug Fixes
Released August 25, 2016
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 primary.
  • More flexible configuration for databases. Master and standby can both be configured on the backup server and pgBackRest will automatically determine which is the primary. This means no configuration changes for backup are required after failing over from a primary 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.
Improvements:
  • 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.

v1.05 Release Notes

Bug Fix for Tablespace Link Checking
Released August 9, 2016
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. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added documentation for scheduling backups with cron. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Documentation Improvements:
  • Moved the backlog from the pgBackRest website to the GitHub repository wiki. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )

v1.04 Release Notes

Various Bug Fixes
Released July 30, 2016
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.
Improvements:
  • Suppress banners on SSH protocol connections.
  • Improved remote error messages to identify the host where the error was raised.
  • 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.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added clarification on why the default for the backrest-user option is backrest . ( Suggested by Michael Vitale. )
  • Updated information about package availability on supported platforms. ( Suggested by Michael Vitale. )

v1.03 Release Notes

Check Command and Bug Fixes
Released July 2, 2016
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.
Improvements:
  • 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.
  • 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.
Additional Notes
Documentation Improvements:
  • Allow a static date to be used for documentation to generate reproducible builds. ( Suggested by Adrian Vondendriesch. )
  • Added documentation for asynchronous archiving to the user guide. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Recommended install location for pgBackRest modules is now /usr/share/perl5 since /usr/lib/perl5 has been removed from the search path in newer versions of Perl.
  • Added instructions for removing prior versions of pgBackRest .

v1.02 Release Notes

Bug Fix for Perl 5.22
Released June 2, 2016
Bug Fixes:
  • 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. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed syntax that was not compatible with Perl 5.2X. ( Fixed by Christoph Berg, Adrian Vondendriesch. )
  • Fixed absolute paths that were used for the PDF logo. ( Reported by Adrian Vondendriesch. )
Documentation Features:
  • 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.
  • Added man page generation. ( Contributed by Adrian Vondendriesch, David Steele. )
  • 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 . ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )

v1.01 Release Notes

Enhanced Info, Selective Restore, and 9.6 Support
Released May 17, 2016
Features:
  • Enhanced text output of info command to include timestamps, sizes, and the reference list for all backups. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Allow selective restore of databases from a cluster backup. This feature can result in major space and time savings when only specific databases are restored. Unrestored databases will not be accessible but must be manually dropped before they will be removed from the shared catalogue. ( Reviewed by Cynthia Shang, Greg Smith, Stephen Frost. Suggested by Stephen Frost. )
  • Experimental support for non-exclusive backups in PostgreSQL 9.6 beta1. Changes to the control/catalog/WAL versions in subsequent betas may break compatibility but pgBackRest will be updated with each release to keep pace. ( Reviewed by Cynthia Shang. )

v1.00 Release Notes

New Repository Format and Configuration Scheme, Link Support
Released April 14, 2016
IMPORTANT NOTE : This flag day release breaks compatibility with older versions of pgBackRest . The manifest format, on-disk structure, configuration scheme, and the exe/path names have all changed. You must create a new repository to hold backups for this version of pgBackRest and keep your older repository for a time in case you need to do a restore. Restores from the prior repository will require the prior version of pgBackRest but because of name changes it is possible to have 1.00 and a prior version of pgBackRest installed at the same time. See the notes below for more detailed information on what has changed.
Features:
  • Implemented a new configuration scheme which should be far simpler to use. See the User Guide and Configuration Reference for details but for a simple configuration all options can now be placed in the stanza section. Options that are shared between stanzas can be placed in the [global] section. More complex configurations can still make use of command sections though this should be a rare use case. ( Suggested by Michael Renner. )
  • The repo-path option now always refers to the repository where backups and archive are stored, whether local or remote, so the repo-remote-path option has been removed. The new spool-path option can be used to define a location for queueing WAL segments when archiving asynchronously. A local repository is no longer required.
  • The default configuration filename is now pgbackrest.conf instead of pg_backrest.conf . This was done for consistency with other naming changes but also to prevent old config files from being loaded accidentally when migrating to 1.00 . ( Suggested by Michael Renner, Stephen Frost. )
  • The default repository name was changed from /var/lib/backup to /var/lib/pgbackrest . ( Suggested by Michael Renner, Stephen Frost. )
  • Lock files are now stored in /tmp/pgbackrest by default. These days /run/pgbackrest is the preferred location but that would require init scripts which are not part of this release. The lock-path option can be used to configure the lock directory.
  • Log files are now stored in /var/log/pgbackrest by default and no longer have the date appended so they can be managed with logrotate . The log-path option can be used to configure the lock directory. ( Suggested by Stephen Frost. )
  • Executable filename changed from pg_backrest to pgbackrest . ( Suggested by Michael Renner, Stephen Frost. )
  • All files and directories linked from PGDATA are now included in the backup. By default links will be restored directly into PGDATA as files or directories. The --link-all option can be used to restore all links to their original locations. The --link-map option can be used to remap a link to a new location.
  • Removed --tablespace option and replaced with --tablespace-map-all option which should more clearly indicate its function.
  • Added detail log level which will output more information than info without being as verbose as debug .

Pre-Stable Releases

v0.92 Release Notes

Command-line Repository Path Fix
Released April 6, 2016
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where the master process was passing --repo-remote-path instead of --repo-path to the remote and causing the lock files to be created in the default repository directory ( /var/lib/backup ), generally ending in failure. This was only an issue when --repo-remote-path was defined on the command line rather than in pg_backrest.conf . ( Reported by Jan Wieck. )

v0.91 Release Notes

Tablespace Bug Fix and Minor Enhancements
Released March 22, 2016
IMPORTANT BUG FIX FOR TABLESPACES : A change to the repository format was accidentally introduced in 0.90 which means the on-disk backup was no longer a valid PostgreSQL cluster when the backup contained tablespaces. This only affected users who directly copied the backups to restore PostgreSQL clusters rather than using the restore command. However, the fix breaks compatibility with older backups that contain tablespaces no matter how they are being restored ( pgBackRest will throw errors and refuse to restore). New full backups should be taken immediately after installing version 0.91 for any clusters that contain tablespaces. If older backups need to be restored then use a version of pgBackRest that matches the backup version.
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed repository incompatibility introduced in pgBackRest 0.90. ( Reported by Evan Benoit. )
Features:
  • Copy global/pg_control last during backups.
  • Write .info and .manifest files to temp before moving them to their final locations and fsync'ing.
  • Rename --no-start-stop option to --no-online .
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • Static source analysis using Perl-Critic, currently passes on gentle.

v0.90 Release Notes

9.5 Support, Various Enhancements, and Minor Bug Fixes
Released February 7, 2016
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where specifying --no-archive-check would throw a configuration error. ( Reported by Jason O'Donnell. )
  • Fixed an issue where a temp WAL file left over after a well-timed system crash could cause the next archive-push to fail.
  • The retention-archive option can now be be safely set to less than backup retention ( retention-full or retention-diff ) without also specifying archive-copy=n . The WAL required to make the backups that fall outside of archive retention consistent will be preserved in the archive. However, in this case PITR will not be possible for the backups that fall outside of archive retention.
Features:
  • When backing up and restoring tablespaces pgBackRest only operates on the subdirectory created for the version of PostgreSQL being run against. Since multiple versions can live in a tablespace (especially during a binary upgrade) this prevents too many files from being copied during a backup and other versions possibly being wiped out during a restore. This only applies to PostgreSQL >= 9.0 — prior versions of PostgreSQL could not share a tablespace directory.
  • Generate an error when archive-check=y but archive_command does not execute pg_backrest . ( Contributed by Jason O'Donnell. )
  • Improved error message when repo-path or repo-remote-path does not exist.
  • Added checks for --delta and --force restore options to ensure that the destination is a valid $PGDATA directory. pgBackRest will check for the presence of PG_VERSION or backup.manifest (left over from an aborted restore). If neither file is found then --delta and --force will be disabled but the restore will proceed unless there are files in the $PGDATA directory (or any tablespace directories) in which case the operation will be aborted.
  • When restore --set=latest (the default) the actual backup restored will be output to the log.
  • Support for PostgreSQL 9.5 partial WAL segments and recovery_target_action setting. The archive_mode = 'always' setting is not yet supported.
  • Support for recovery_target = 'immediate' recovery setting introduced in PostgreSQL 9.4.
  • The following tablespace checks have been added: paths or files in pg_tblspc, relative links in pg_tblspc, tablespaces in $PGDATA. All three will generate errors.

v0.89 Release Notes

Timeout Bug Fix and Restore Read-Only Repositories
Released December 24, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where longer-running backups/restores would timeout when remote and threaded. Keepalives are now used to make sure the remote for the main process does not timeout while the thread remotes do all the work. The error message for timeouts was also improved to make debugging easier. ( Reported by Stephen Frost. )
Features:
  • Allow restores to be performed on a read-only repository by using --no-lock and --log-level-file=off . The --no-lock option can only be used with restores.

v0.88 Release Notes

Documentation and Minor Bug Fixes
Released November 22, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where the start / stop commands required the --config option. ( Reported by Dmitry Didovicher. )
  • Fixed an issue where log files were being overwritten instead of appended. ( Reported by Stephen Frost, Dmitry Didovicher. )
  • Fixed an issue where backup-user was not optional.
Features:
  • Symlinks are no longer created in backup directories in the repository. These symlinks could point virtually anywhere and potentially be dangerous. Symlinks are still recreated during a restore. ( Suggested by Stephen Frost. )
  • Added better messaging for backup expiration. Full and differential backup expirations are logged on a single line along with a list of all dependent backups expired.
  • Archive retention is automatically set to full backup retention if not explicitly configured.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added documentation in the user guide for delta restores, expiration, dedicated backup hosts, starting and stopping pgBackRest , and replication.

v0.87 Release Notes

Website and User Guide
Released October 28, 2015
Features:
  • The backup_label.old and recovery.done files are now excluded from backups.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added a new user guide that covers pgBackRest basics and some advanced topics including PITR. Much more to come, but it's a start. ( Contributed by David Steele, Stephen Frost. Reviewed by Michael Renner, Cynthia Shang, Eric Radman, Dmitry Didovicher. )

v0.85 Release Notes

Start/Stop Commands and Minor Bug Fixes
Released October 8, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where an error could be returned after a backup or restore completely successfully.
  • Fixed an issue where a resume would fail if temp files were left in the root backup directory when the backup failed. This scenario was likely if the backup process got terminated during the copy phase.
Features:
  • Added stop and start commands to prevent pgBackRest processes from running on a system where PostgreSQL is shutdown or the system needs to be quiesced for some other reason.
  • Experimental support for PostgreSQL 9.5 beta1. This may break when the control version or WAL magic changes in future versions but will be updated in each pgBackRest release to keep pace. All regression tests pass except for --target-resume tests (this functionality has changed in 9.5) and there is no testing yet for .partial WAL segments.

v0.82 Release Notes

Refactoring, Command-line Help, and Minor Bug Fixes
Released September 14, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where resumed compressed backups were not preserving existing files.
  • Fixed an issue where resume and incr/diff would not ensure that the prior backup had the same compression and hardlink settings.
  • Fixed an issue where a cold backup using --no-start-stop could be started on a running PostgreSQL cluster without --force specified.
  • Fixed an issue where a thread could be started even when none were requested.
  • Fixed an issue where the pgBackRest version number was not being updated in backup.info and archive.info after an upgrade/downgrade.
  • Fixed an issue where the info command was throwing an exception when the repository contained no stanzas. ( Reported by Stephen Frost. )
  • Fixed an issue where the PostgreSQL pg_stop_backup() NOTICEs were being output to stderr . ( Reported by Stephen Frost. )
Features:
  • Experimental support for PostgreSQL 9.5 alpha2. This may break when the control version or WAL magic changes in future versions but will be updated in each pgBackRest release to keep pace. All regression tests pass except for --target-resume tests (this functionality has changed in 9.5) and there is no testing yet for .partial WAL segments.
Improvements:
  • Renamed recovery-setting option and section to recovery-option to be more consistent with pgBackRest naming conventions.
  • Added dynamic module loading to speed up commands, especially asynchronous archiving.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Command-line help is now extracted from the same XML source that is used for the other documentation and includes much more detail.

v0.80 Release Notes

DBI Support, Stability, and Convenience Features
Released August 9, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue that caused the formatted timestamp for both the oldest and newest backups to be reported as the current time by the info command. Only text output was affected -- json output reported the correct epoch values. ( Reported by Michael Renner. )
  • Fixed protocol issue that was preventing ssh errors (especially on connection) from being logged.
Features:
  • The repository is now created and updated with consistent directory and file modes. By default umask is set to 0000 but this can be disabled with the neutral-umask setting. ( Suggested by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Added the stop-auto option to allow failed backups to automatically be stopped when a new backup starts.
  • Added the db-timeout option to limit the amount of time pgBackRest will wait for pg_start_backup() and pg_stop_backup() to return.
  • Remove pg_control file at the beginning of the restore and copy it back at the very end. This prevents the possibility that a partial restore can be started by PostgreSQL .
  • Added checks to be sure the db-path setting is consistent with db-port by comparing the data_directory as reported by the cluster against the db-path setting and the version as reported by the cluster against the value read from pg_control . The db-socket-path setting is checked to be sure it is an absolute path.
  • Experimental support for PostgreSQL 9.5 alpha1. This may break when the control version or WAL magic changes in future versions but will be updated in each pgBackRest release to keep pace. All regression tests pass except for --target-resume tests (this functionality has changed in 9.5) and there is no testing yet for .partial WAL segments.
Improvements:
  • Now using Perl DBI and DBD::Pg for connections to PostgreSQL rather than psql . The cmd-psql and cmd-psql-option settings have been removed and replaced with db-port and db-socket-path . Follow the instructions in the Installation Guide to install DBD::Pg on your operating system.
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • Added vagrant test configurations for Ubuntu 14.04 and CentOS 7.

v0.78 Release Notes

Remove CPAN Dependencies, Stability Improvements
Released July 13, 2015
Improvements:
  • Removed dependency on CPAN packages for multi-threaded operation. While it might not be a bad idea to update the threads and Thread::Queue packages, it is no longer necessary.
  • Modified wait backoff to use a Fibonacci rather than geometric sequence. This will make wait time grow less aggressively while still giving reasonable values.
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • Added vagrant test configurations for Ubuntu 12.04 and CentOS 6.

v0.77 Release Notes

CentOS/RHEL 6 Support and Protocol Improvements
Released June 30, 2015
Features:
  • Added file and directory syncs to the File object for additional safety during backup/restore and archiving. ( Suggested by Andres Freund. )
  • Added support for Perl 5.10.1 and OpenSSH 5.3 which are default for CentOS/RHEL 6. ( Suggested by Eric Radman. )
  • Improved error message when backup is run without archive_command set and without --no-archive-check specified. ( Suggested by Eric Radman. )

v0.75 Release Notes

New Repository Format, Info Command and Experimental 9.5 Support
Released June 14, 2015
IMPORTANT NOTE : This flag day release breaks compatibility with older versions of pgBackRest . The manifest format, on-disk structure, and the binary names have all changed. You must create a new repository to hold backups for this version of pgBackRest and keep your older repository for a time in case you need to do a restore. The pg_backrest.conf file has not changed but you'll need to change any references to pg_backrest.pl in cron (or elsewhere) to pg_backrest (without the .pl extension).
Features:
  • Added the info command.
  • Logging now uses unbuffered output. This should make log files that are being written by multiple threads less chaotic. ( Suggested by Michael Renner. )
  • Experimental support for PostgreSQL 9.5. This may break when the control version or WAL magic changes but will be updated in each release.
Improvements:
  • More efficient file ordering for backup . Files are copied in descending size order so a single thread does not end up copying a large file at the end. This had already been implemented for restore .

v0.70 Release Notes

Stability Improvements for Archiving, Improved Logging and Help
Released June 1, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where archive-copy would fail on an incr/diff backup when hardlink=n . In this case the pg_xlog path does not already exist and must be created. ( Reported by Michael Renner. )
  • Fixed an issue in async archiving where archive-push was not properly returning 0 when archive-max-mb was reached and moved the async check after transfer to avoid having to remove the stop file twice. Also added unit tests for this case and improved error messages to make it clearer to the user what went wrong. ( Reported by Michael Renner. )
  • Fixed a locking issue that could allow multiple operations of the same type against a single stanza. This appeared to be benign in terms of data integrity but caused spurious errors while archiving and could lead to errors in backup/restore. ( Reported by Michael Renner. )
Features:
  • Allow duplicate WAL segments to be archived when the checksum matches. This is necessary for some recovery scenarios.
  • Allow comments/disabling in pg_backrest.conf using the # character. Only # characters in the forst character of the line are honored. ( Suggested by Michael Renner. )
  • Better logging before pg_start_backup() to make it clear when the backup is waiting on a checkpoint. ( Suggested by Michael Renner. )
  • Various command behavior and logging fixes. ( Reviewed by Michael Renner. Suggested by Michael Renner. )
Improvements:
  • Replaced JSON module with JSON::PP which ships with core Perl.
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Various help fixes. ( Reviewed by Michael Renner. Reported by Michael Renner. )

v0.65 Release Notes

Improved Resume and Restore Logging, Compact Restores
Released May 11, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where an absolute path was not written into recovery.conf when the restore was run with a relative path.
Features:
  • Better resume support. Resumed files are checked to be sure they have not been modified and the manifest is saved more often to preserve checksums as the backup progresses. More unit tests to verify each resume case.
  • Resume is now optional. Use the resume setting or --no-resume from the command line to disable.
  • More info messages during restore. Previously, most of the restore messages were debug level so not a lot was output in the log.
  • Added tablespace setting to allow tablespaces to be restored into the pg_tblspc path. This produces compact restores that are convenient for development, staging, etc. Currently these restores cannot be backed up as pgBackRest expects only links in the pg_tblspc path.

v0.61 Release Notes

Bug Fix for Uncompressed Remote Destination
Released April 21, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed a buffering error that could occur on large, highly-compressible files when copying to an uncompressed remote destination. The error was detected in the decompression code and resulted in a failed backup rather than corruption so it should not affect successful backups made with previous versions.

v0.60 Release Notes

Better Version Support and WAL Improvements
Released April 19, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Pushing duplicate WAL now generates an error. This worked before only if checksums were disabled.
Features:
  • Database System IDs are used to make sure that all WAL in an archive matches up. This should help prevent misconfigurations that send WAL from multiple clusters to the same archive.
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • Regression tests working back to PostgreSQL 8.3.

v0.50 Release Notes

Restore and Much More
Released March 25, 2015
Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed broken checksums and now they work with normal and resumed backups. Finally realized that checksums and checksum deltas should be functionally separated and this simplified a number of things. Issue #28 has been created for checksum deltas.
  • Fixed an issue where a backup could be resumed from an aborted backup that didn't have the same type and prior backup.
Features:
  • Added restore functionality.
  • All options can now be set on the command-line making pg_backrest.conf optional.
  • De/compression is now performed without threads and checksum/size is calculated in stream. That means file checksums are no longer optional.
  • Added option --no-start-stop to allow backups when Postgres is shut down. If postmaster.pid is present then --force is required to make the backup run (though if Postgres is running an inconsistent backup will likely be created). This option was added primarily for the purpose of unit testing, but there may be applications in the real world as well.
  • Checksum for backup.manifest to detect a corrupted/modified manifest.
  • Link latest always points to the last backup. This has been added for convenience and to make restores simpler.
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • More comprehensive unit tests in all areas.

v0.30 Release Notes

Core Restructuring and Unit Tests
Released October 5, 2014
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added much needed documentation
Test Suite Features:
  • Fairly comprehensive unit tests for all the basic operations. More work to be done here for sure, but then there is always more work to be done on unit tests.

v0.19 Release Notes

Improved Error Reporting/Handling
Released May 13, 2014
Bug Fixes:
  • Found and squashed a nasty bug where file_copy() was defaulted to ignore errors. There was also an issue in file_exists() that was causing the test to fail when the file actually did exist. Together they could have resulted in a corrupt backup with no errors, though it is very unlikely.

v0.18 Release Notes

Return Soft Error When Archive Missing
Released April 13, 2014
Bug Fixes:
  • The archive-get command now returns a 1 when the archive file is missing to differentiate from hard errors (ssh connection failure, file copy error, etc.) This lets PostgreSQL know that that the archive stream has terminated normally. However, this does not take into account possible holes in the archive stream. ( Reported by Stephen Frost. )

v0.17 Release Notes

Warn When Archive Directories Cannot Be Deleted
Released April 3, 2014
Bug Fixes:
  • If an archive directory which should be empty could not be deleted backrest was throwing an error. There's a good fix for that coming, but for the time being it has been changed to a warning so processing can continue. This was impacting backups as sometimes the final archive file would not get pushed if the first archive file had been in a different directory (plus some bad luck).

v0.16 Release Notes

RequestTTY=yes for SSH Sessions
Released April 1, 2014
Bug Fixes:
  • Added RequestTTY=yes to ssh sessions. Hoping this will prevent random lockups.

v0.15 Release Notes

Added archive-get
Released March 29, 2014
Features:
  • Added archive-get functionality to aid in restores.
  • Added option to force a checkpoint when starting the backup, start-fast=y .

v0.11 Release Notes

Minor Fixes
Released March 26, 2014
Bug Fixes:
  • Removed master_stderr_discard option on database SSH connections. There have been occasional lockups and they could be related to issues originally seen in the file code. ( Reported by Stephen Frost. )
  • Changed lock file conflicts on backup and expire commands to ERROR . They were set to DEBUG due to a copy-and-paste from the archive locks.

v0.10 Release Notes

Backup and Archiving are Functional
Released March 5, 2014
Features:
  • No restore functionality, but the backup directories are consistent PostgreSQL data directories. You'll need to either uncompress the files or turn off compression in the backup. Uncompressed backups on a ZFS (or similar) filesystem are a good option because backups can be restored locally via a snapshot to create logical backups or do spot data recovery.
  • Archiving is single-threaded. This has not posed an issue on our multi-terabyte databases with heavy write volume. Recommend a large WAL volume or to use the async option with a large volume nearby.
  • Backups are multi-threaded, but the Net::OpenSSH library does not appear to be 100% thread-safe so it will very occasionally lock up on a thread. There is an overall process timeout that resolves this issue by killing the process. Yes, very ugly.
  • Checksums are lost on any resumed backup. Only the final backup will record checksum on multiple resumes. Checksums from previous backups are correctly recorded and a full backup will reset everything.
  • The backup.manifest is being written as Storable because Config::IniFile does not seem to handle large files well. Would definitely like to save these as human-readable text.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Absolutely no documentation (outside the code). Well, excepting these release notes.