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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, for instance the 1.XX releases are not compatible with the 0.XX releases. Minor releases can include bug fixes and features but do not change the repository format and strive to avoid changing options and naming.

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

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 1.XX 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. )
Refactoring:
  • Harden protocol handshake to handle race conditions.
  • Fixed misleading error message when a file was opened for write in a missing directory.
  • Change log level of hardlink logging to detail .
  • Cast size in S3 manifest to integer.
  • Rename Archive modules to remove redundancy.
  • Improve S3 error reporting.
  • Minor optimizations to package loads and ordering for archive-get and archive-push commands.
Additional Notes
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Remove exhaustive version list from Stable Releases TOC.
  • Improve S3 server implementation in documentation.
  • Update CentOS 6 documentation to build on PostgreSQL 9.5.
  • Remove mount from host cache-key because it can vary by system.
Test Suite Bug Fixes:
  • Fix timeouts in ExecuteTest to speed multi-process testing.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Add documentation builds to CI.
  • Remove patch directory before Debian package builds.
  • Combine hardlink and non/compressed in synthetic tests to reduce test time and improve coverage.
  • Split full module into mock and real to allow better test combinations and save time in CI.
  • Consolidate archive-push and archive-get tests into new archive test.
  • Eliminate redundancy in real tests.
  • Install sudo in base containers rather than on demand.
  • More optimized container suite that greatly improves build time.
  • Added static Debian packages for Devel::Cover to reduce build time.
  • Add deprecated state for containers. Deprecated containers may only be used to build packages.
  • Remove Debian 8 from CI because it does not provide additional coverage over Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04, 16.04 .
  • Add Debian 9 to test suite.
  • Remove process-max option. Parallelism is now tested in a more targeted manner and the high level option is no longer needed.
  • Balance database versions between VMs to minimize test duration.
  • Automatically check that all supported PostgreSQL versions are being tested on a single default VM.
  • Add performance module and basic performance test for archive-push .

Stable Releases

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 master) if the standby is not configured and/or reachable. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Fixed config warnings raised from a remote process causing errors in the master process. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. )
Features:
  • Amazon S3 repository support. ( Reviewed by Cynthia Shang. )
Refactoring:
  • Refactor storage layer to allow for new repository filesystems using drivers. ( Reviewed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Refactor IO layer to allow for new compression formats, checksum types, and other capabilities using filters. ( Reviewed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Move modules in Protocol directory in subdirectories.
  • Move backup modules into Backup directory.
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. )
Test Suite Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an undefined variable when a module had no uncoverable code exceptions.
  • Fixed issue with --dry-run requiring --vm-out to work properly.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Moved test and env modules to new directories to avoid namespace conflicts with common tests.
  • Set --vm-max=2 for CI.
  • Remove flapping protocol timeout test that will be replaced in the upcoming storage patch.

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. )
Refactoring:
  • Simplify locking scheme. Now, only the master process will hold write locks (for archive-push and backup commands) and not all local and remote worker processes as before.
  • Refactor Ini.pm to facilitate testing.
  • Do not set timestamps of files in the backup directories to match timestamps in the cluster directory. This was originally done to enable backup resume, but that process is now implemented with checksums.
  • Improved error message when the restore command detects the presence of postmaster.pid . ( Suggested by Yogesh Sharma. )
  • Renumber return codes between 25 and 125 to avoid PostgreSQL interpreting some as fatal signal exceptions. ( Suggested by Yogesh Sharma. )
  • The backup and restore commands no longer copy via temp files. In both cases the files are checksummed on resume so there's no danger of partial copies.
  • Allow functions to accept optional parameters as a hash.
  • Refactor File->list() and fileList() to accept optional parameters.
  • Refactor backupLabel() and add unit tests.
  • Silence some perl critic warnings. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Update wording for release note sections.
  • Ignore clock skew in container libc/package builds using make. It is common for containers to have clock skew so the build process takes care of this issue independently.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Complete statement/branch coverage for Ini.pm .
  • Improved functions used to test/munge manifest and info files.
  • Coverage testing always enabled on Debian-based containers.
  • Require description in every call to testResult() .
  • Make iWaitSeconds an optional parameter for testResult() .
  • Updated vagrant to new version and image.
  • Fixed flapping archive stop tests.
  • Added ability to test warning messages. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )

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. )
Refactoring:
  • Improved the code and tests for fileManifest() to prevent a possible race condition when files are removed by the database while the manifest is being built.
Additional Notes
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Container executions now load the user's environment.
Test Suite Features:
  • Continuous integration using travis-ci .
  • Automated builds of Debian packages for all supported distributions.
  • Added --dev option to aggregate commonly used dev options.
  • Added --retry option.
  • Added --no-package option to skip package builds.
  • C library and packages are built by default, added -smart option to rebuild only when file changes are detected.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • The --libc-only option has been changed to --build-only now that packages builds have been added.
  • Improved formatting of testResult() output.
  • Improved truncation when outputting errors logs in the ExecuteTest module.
  • Fixed flapping archive-stop test with testResult() retries.
  • Added final test of archive contents to archive-push test.
  • Temporarily disable flapping keep-alive test.

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. )
Refactoring:
  • Refactor FileCommon::fileManifest() and FileCommon::fileStat to be more modular to allow complete branch/statement level coverage testing.
Additional Notes
Test Suite Features:
  • Complete branch/statement level coverage testing for FileCommon::fileManifest() and FileCommon::fileStat functions and helper functions.

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. )
Refactoring:
  • 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. )
  • Documentation can now be built with reusable blocks to reduce duplication.
  • Improved support for --require option and section depends now default to the previous section.
  • Added ability to pass options to containers within the documentation.
  • Add proper tag to slightly emphasize proper nouns.

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 Avellar. )
  • Fixed an issue where protocol mismatch errors did not output the expected value.
  • Fixed a spurious archive-get log message that indicated an exit code of 1 was an abnormal termination.
Features:
  • Improved, multi-process implementation of asynchronous archiving.
  • Improved stanza-create command so that it can repair broken repositories in most cases and is robust enough to be made mandatory. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Improved check command to run on a standby, though only basic checks are done because pg_switch_xlog() cannot be executed on a replica. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Added archive and backup WAL ranges to the info command.
  • Added warning to update pg_tablespace.spclocation when remapping tablespaces in PostgreSQL < 9.2. ( Contributed by blogh. )
  • Remove remote lock requirements for the archive-get , restore , info , and check commands since they are read-only operations. ( Suggested by Michael Vitale. )
Refactoring:
  • Refactor File and BackupCommon modules to improve test coverage.
  • Return proper error code when unable to convert a relative path to an absolute path. ( Suggested by Yogesh Sharma. )
  • Log file banner is not output until the first log entry is written. ( Suggested by Jens Wilke. )
  • Moved File->manifest() into the FileCommon.pm module.
  • Moved the Archive modules to the Archive directory and split the archive-get and archive-push commands into separate modules.
  • Split the check command out of the Archive.pm module.
  • Allow logging to be suppressed via logDisable() and logEnable() .
  • Allow for locks to be taken more than once in the same process without error.
  • Lock directories can be created when more than one directory level is required.
  • Clean up optionValid() / optionTest() logic in Lock.pm .
  • Added Exception::exceptionCode() and Exception::exceptionMessage() to simplify error handling logic.
  • Represent .gz extension with a constant.
  • Allow empty files to be created with FileCommon::fileStringWrite() and use temp files to avoid partial reads.
  • Refactor process IO and process master/minion code out from the common protocol code.
  • Reduced the likelihood of torn pages causing a false positive in page checksums by filtering on start backup LSN.
  • Remove Intel-specific optimization from C library build flags. ( Contributed by Adrian Vondendriesch. )
  • Removed --lock option. This option was introduced before the lock directory could be located outside the repository and is now obsolete.
  • Added --log-timestamp option to allow timestamps to be suppressed in logging. This is primarily used to avoid filters in the automated documentation.
  • Fixed alignment issues with multiline logging.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added documentation to the User Guide for the process-max option. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Update LICENSE.txt for 2017.
Test Suite Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed --no-online tests to suppress expected errors.
Test Suite Features:
  • Added integration for testing coverage with Devel::Cover .
  • Added unit tests for low-level functions in the File and BackupCommon modules.
  • C Library builds only run when C library has actually changed.
  • Added more flexibility in initializing and cleaning up after modules and tests.
  • testResult() suppresses logging and reports exceptions.
  • testException() allows messages to be matched with regular expressions.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Split test modules into separate files to make the code more maintainable. Tests are dynamically loaded by name rather than requiring an if-else block.
  • Allow multiple --module , --test , and --run options to be used for test.pl .
  • Added expect log expression to replace year subdirectories in backup.history .
  • Refactor name/locations of common modules that setup test environments.

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. )
Refactoring:
  • Abstracted code to determine which database cluster is the master and which are standbys. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Improved consistency and flexibility of the protocol layer by using JSON for all messages.
  • File copy protocol now accepts a function that can do additional processing on the copy buffers and return a result to the calling process.
  • Improved IO->bufferRead to always return requested number of bytes until EOF.
  • For simplicity, the pg_control file is now copied with the rest of the files instead of by itself of at the end of the process. The backup command does not require this behavior and the restore copies to a temporary file which is renamed at the end of the restore.
  • Simplified the result hash of File->manifest() , Db->tablespaceMapGet() , and Db->databaseMapGet() .
  • Improved errors returned from child processes by removing redundant error level and code.
  • Code cleanup in preparation for improved stanza-create command. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Improved parameter/result logging in debug/trace functions.
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.
  • Allow a source to be included as a section so large documents can be broken up.
  • Added section link support to Markdown output.
  • Added list support to PDF output.
  • Added include option to explicitly build sources (complements the exclude option though both cannot be used in the same invocation).
  • Added keyword-add option to add keywords without overriding the default keyword.
  • Added debug option to doc.pl to easily add the debug keyword to documentation builds.
  • Added pre option to doc.pl to easily add the pre keyword to documentation builds.
  • Builds in release.pl now remove all docker containers to get consistent IP address assignments.
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Improvements to markdown rendering.
  • Remove code dependency on project variable, instead use title param.
Test Suite Bug Fixes:
  • Removed erroneous --no-config option in help test module.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Update control and WAL test files to 9.4 with matching system identifiers. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Improved exception handling in file unit tests.
  • Changed the --no-fork test option to --fork with negation to match all other boolean parameters.
  • Various improvements to validation of backup and restore.
  • Add more realistic data files to synthetic backup and restore tests.

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. )
Refactoring:
  • Removed extraneous use lib directives from Perl modules. ( Suggested by Devrim Gündüz. )
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed missing variable replacements.
  • Removed hard-coded host names from configuration file paths.
Documentation Features:
  • Allow command-line length to be configured using cmd-line-len param.
  • Added compact param to allow CSS to be embedded in HTML file.
  • Added pretty param to produce HTML with proper indenting.
  • Only generate HTML menu when required and don't require index page.
  • Assign numbers to sections by default.
  • VM mount points are now optional.

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.
Refactoring:
  • Clarified error message when unable to acquire pgBackRest advisory lock to make it clear that it is not a PostgreSQL backup lock. ( Suggested by Jens Wilke. )
  • pgBackRest version number included in command start INFO log output.
  • Process ID logged for local process start/stop INFO log output.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added archive-timeout option documentation to the user guide. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Added dev option to doc.pl to easily add the dev keyword to documentation builds.
Test Suite Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed missing expect output for help module.
  • Fixed broken vm-max option in test.pl .
Test Suite Features:
  • Update CentOS/Debian package definitions.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Regression tests can now be run as any properly-configured user, not just vagrant.
  • Miminize TeXLive package list to save time during VM builds.

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. )
Refactoring:
  • Cache file log output until the file is created to create a more complete log.
Additional Notes
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Show Process ID in output instead of filtering it out with the timestamp.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Suppress dpkg-reconfigure: unable to re-open stdin: No file or directory warning in Vagrant VM build. ( Contributed by John Harvey. )
  • Show Process ID in expect logs instead of filtering it out with the timestamp.

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 master during standby backup.
  • Fixed the check command so backup info is checked remotely and not just locally. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Fixed an issue where retention-archive was not automatically being set when retention-archive-type=diff , resulting in a less aggressive than intended expiration of archive. ( Fixed by Cynthia Shang. )
Features:
  • Converted Perl threads to processes to improve compatibility and performance.
  • Exclude contents of $PGDATA/pg_replslot directory so that replication slots on the master do not become part of the backup.
  • The archive-start and archive-stop settings are now filled in backup.manifest even when archive-check=n . ( 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.
Refactoring:
  • Refactor of protocol minions in preparation for the new local minion.
  • Remove obsolete thread index variable from File() module.
  • Changed temporary file names to consistently use the .pgbackrest.tmp extension even if the destination file is compressed or has an appended checksum.
  • Improve ASSERT error handling, safely check eval blocks, and convert $@ to $EVAL_ERROR .
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed minor documentation reproducibility issues related to binary paths.
Documentation Features:
  • Documentation for archive retention. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Suppress TOC for unsupported versions of pgBackRest .
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • New vagrant base box and make uid/gid selection for containers dynamic.

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 master.
  • More flexible configuration for databases. Master and standby can both be configured on the backup server and pgBackRest will automatically determine which is the master. This means no configuration changes for backup are required after failing over from a master to standby when a separate backup server is used.
  • Exclude directories during backup that are cleaned, recreated, or zeroed by PostgreSQL at startup. These include pgsql_tmp and pg_stat_tmp . The postgresql.auto.conf.tmp file is now excluded in addition to files that were already excluded: backup_label.old , postmaster.opts , postmaster.pid , recovery.conf , recovery.done .
  • Experimental support for non-exclusive backups in PostgreSQL 9.6 beta4. Changes to the control/catalog/WAL versions in subsequent betas may break compatibility but pgBackRest will be updated with each release to keep pace.
Refactoring:
  • Simplify protocol creation and identifying which host is local/remote.
  • Removed all OP_* function constants that were used only for debugging, not in the protocol, and replaced with __PACKAGE__ .
  • Improvements in Db module: separated out connect() function, allow executeSql() calls that do not return data, and improve error handling.
  • Improve error message for links that reference links in manifest build.
  • Added hints to error message when relative paths are detected in archive-push or archive-get .
  • Improve backup log messages to indicate which host the files are being copied from.
Additional Notes
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Improve host tag rendering.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Refactor db version constants into a separate module.
  • Update synthetic backup tests to PostgreSQL 9.4.

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 Refactoring:
  • Moved the backlog from the pgBackRest website to the GitHub repository wiki. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
  • Improved rendering of spaces in code blocks.

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.
Refactoring:
  • Enhancements to the protocol layer for improved reliability and error handling.
  • All remote types now take locks. The exceptions date to when the test harness and pgBackRest were running in the same VM and no longer apply.
  • Exceptions are now passed back from threads as messages when possible rather than raised directly.
  • Temp files created during backup are now placed in the same directory as the target file.
  • Output lock file name when a lock cannot be acquired to aid in debugging.
  • Reduce calls to protocolGet() in backup/restore.
  • Suppress banners on SSH protocol connections.
  • Improved remote error messages to identify the host where the error was raised.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Added release.pl to make releases reproducible. For now this only includes building and deploying documentation.
  • 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. )
Documentation Refactoring:
  • HTML footer dates are statically created in English in order to be reproducible. ( Suggested by Adrian Vondendriesch. )
Test Suite Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed a version checking issue in test.pl .
  • Fixed an issue where multi-threaded tests were not being run when requested.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Reduce the frequency that certain tests are run to save time in regression.
  • Disable control master for older OS versions where it is less stable.

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.
Refactoring:
  • The pg_xlogfile_name() function is no longer used to construct WAL filenames from LSNs. While this function is convenient it is not available on a standby. Instead, the archive is searched for the LSN in order to find the timeline. If due to some misadventure the LSN appears on multiple timelines then an error will be thrown, whereas before this condition would have passed unnoticed.
  • Option handling is now far more strict. Previously it was possible for a command to use an option that was not explicitly assigned to it. This was especially true for the backup-host and db-host options which are used to determine locality.
  • Improved handling of users/groups captured during backup that do not exist on the restore host. Also explicitly handle the case where user/group is not mapped to a name.
  • Changed version variable to a constant. It had originally been designed to play nice with a specific packaging tool but that tool was never used.
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed DTD search path that did not work properly when --doc-path was used.
  • Fixed pgBackRest -specific xml that was loaded for non- pgBackRest projects.
  • Fixed section names being repeated in the info output when multiple --require options depended on the same sections.
  • Fixed pgBackRest config sections being blank in the output when not loaded from cache.
Documentation Features:
  • Allow hidden options to be added to a command. This allows certain commands (like apt-get ) to be forced during the build without making that a part of the documentation.
  • Allow command summaries to be inserted anywhere in the documentation to avoid duplication.
  • Allow a static date to be used for documentation to generate reproducible builds. ( Suggested by Adrian Vondendriesch. )
  • Update TeX Live to 2016 version.
  • Added documentation for asynchronous archiving to the user guide. ( Contributed by Cynthia Shang. )
Documentation Refactoring:
  • 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 .
  • New, consolidated implementation for link rendering.
  • PostgreSQL version is now a variable to allow multi-version documentation.
Test Suite Features:
  • Obsolete containers are removed by the --vm-force option.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Major refactor of the test suite to make it more modular and object-oriented. Multiple Docker containers can now be created for a single test to simulate more realistic environments. Tests paths have been renamed for clarity.
  • Greatly reduced the quantity of Docker containers built by default. Containers are only built for PostgreSQL versions specified in db-minimal and those required to build documentation. Additional containers can be built with --db-version=all or by specifying a version, e.g. --db-version=9.4 .

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. )
Refactoring:
  • Log directory create and file open now using FileCommon functions which produce more detailed error messages on failure.
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. )
  • Added an execution cache so that documentation can be generated without setting up the full container environment. This is useful for packaging, keeps the documentation consistent for a release, and speeds up generation when no changes are made in the execution list.
Documentation Refactoring:
  • 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. )
  • Remove function constants and pass strings directly to logDebugParam(). The function names were only used once so creating constants for them was wasteful.
  • Lists can now be used outside of p and text tags for more flexible document structuring.
Test Suite Bug Fixes:
  • Replaced overzealous perl -cW check which failed on Perl 5.22 with perl -cw .
Test Suite Features:
  • Added Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) and Debian 8 (Jessie) to the regression suite.
  • Upgraded doc/test VM to Ubuntu 16.04. This will help catch Perl errors in the doc code since it is not run across multiple distributions like the core and test code. It is also to be hoped that a newer kernel will make Docker more stable.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • Test release version against the executable using change-log.xml instead of CHANGELOG.md .

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.
Additional Notes
Documentation Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed an issue where document generation failed because some OSs are not tolerant of having multiple installed versions of PostgreSQL . A separate VM is now created for each version. Also added a sleep after database starts during document generation to ensure the database is running before the next command runs. ( Reported by John Harvey. )

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.
Additional Notes
Documentation Refactoring:
  • Minor styling changes, clarifications and rewording in the user guide.
Test Suite Refactoring:
  • The dev branch has been renamed to master and for the time being the master branch has renamed to release, though it will probably be removed at some point -- thus ends the gitflow experiment for pgBackRest . It is recommended that any forks get re-forked and clones get re-cloned.

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. )
Documentation Refactoring:
  • The website, markdown, and command-line help are now all generated from the same XML source.

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.
Refactoring:
  • Removed dependency on IO::String module.

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.
Refactoring:
  • Renamed recovery-setting option and section to recovery-option to be more consistent with pgBackRest naming conventions.
  • Code cleanup and refactoring to standardize on patterns that have evolved over time.
  • 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.
Test Suite Features:
  • Expiration tests are now synthetic rather than based on actual backups. This will allow development of more advanced expiration features.

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.
Refactoring:
  • 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.
  • Major refactoring of the protocol layer to support future development.
Additional Notes
Documentation Features:
  • Split most of README.md out into USERGUIDE.md and CHANGELOG.md because it was becoming unwieldy. Changed most references to database in the user guide to database cluster for clarity.
  • Changed most references to database in the user guide to database cluster for clarity.
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
Refactoring:
  • 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.
  • More options for regression tests and improved code to run in a variety of environments.

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. )
Refactoring:
  • Removed pg_backrest_remote and added the functionality to pg_backrest as the remote command.
  • Moved version number out of the VERSION file to Version.pm to better support packaging. ( Suggested by Michael Renner. )
  • Replaced IPC::System::Simple and Net::OpenSSH with IPC::Open3 to eliminate CPAN dependency for multiple operating systems.

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.
Refactoring:
  • 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. )
Refactoring:
  • 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.
Refactoring:
  • Improved threading model by starting threads early and terminating them late.
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.
Refactoring:
  • Removed dependency on Moose . It wasn't being used extensively and makes for longer startup times.
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
Refactoring:
  • Complete rewrite of BackRest::File module to use a custom protocol for remote operations and Perl native GZIP and SHA operations. Compression is performed in threads rather than forked processes.
  • Removed dependency on Storable and replaced with a custom ini file implementation.
  • Numerous other changes that can only be identified with a diff.
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.
Refactoring:
  • Worked on improving error handling in the File object. This is not complete, but works well enough to find a few errors that have been causing us problems (notably, find is occasionally failing building the archive async manifest when system is under load).

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.