pgBackRest - Command Reference

Annotate backup with user-defined key/value pairs.

Users can attach informative key/value pairs to the backup. This option may be used multiple times to attach multiple annotations.

Annotations are output by the info command text output when a backup is specified with --set and always appear in the JSON output.

Backup set to annotate.

The backup set to annotate.

Buffer size for I/O operations.

Buffer size used for copy, compress, encrypt, and other operations. The number of buffers used depends on options and each operation may use additional memory, e.g. gz compression may use an additional 256KiB of memory.

Allowed values are 16KiB, 32KiB, 64KiB, 128KiB, 256KiB, 512KiB, 1MiB, 2MiB, 4MiB, 8MiB, and 16MiB.

Network compression level.

Sets the network compression level when compress-type=none and the command is not run on the same host as the repository. Compression is used to reduce network traffic but can be disabled by setting compress-level-network=0. When compress-type does not equal none the compress-level-network setting is ignored and compress-level is used instead so that the file is only compressed once.

pgBackRest configuration file.

Use this option to specify a different configuration file than the default.

Path to additional pgBackRest configuration files.

Configuration files existing in the specified location with extension .conf will be concatenated with the pgBackRest configuration file, resulting in one configuration file.

Base path of pgBackRest configuration files.

This setting is used to override the default base path setting for the --config and --config-include-path options unless they are explicitly set on the command-line.

For example, passing only --config-path=/conf/pgbackrest results in the --config default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/pgbackrest.conf and the --config-include-path default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/conf.d.

I/O timeout.

Timeout, in seconds, used for connections and read/write operations.

Note that the entire read/write operation does not need to complete within this timeout but some progress must be made, even if it is only a single byte.

Path where lock files are stored.

The lock path provides a location for pgBackRest to create lock files to prevent conflicting operations from being run concurrently.

Use a neutral umask.

Sets the umask to 0000 so modes in the repository are created in a sensible way. The default directory mode is 0750 and default file mode is 0640. The lock and log directories set the directory and file mode to 0770 and 0660 respectively.

To use the executing user’s umask instead specify neutral-umask=n in the config file or --no-neutral-umask on the command line.

Protocol timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, that the local or remote process will wait for a new message to be received on the protocol layer. This prevents processes from waiting indefinitely for a message.

Keep-alive enable.

Enables keep-alive messages on socket connections.

Defines the stanza.

A stanza is the configuration for a PostgreSQL database cluster that defines where it is located, how it will be backed up, archiving options, etc. Most db servers will only have one PostgreSQL database cluster and therefore one stanza, whereas backup servers will have a stanza for every database cluster that needs to be backed up.

It is tempting to name the stanza after the primary cluster but a better name describes the databases contained in the cluster. Because the stanza name will be used for the primary and all replicas it is more appropriate to choose a name that describes the actual function of the cluster, such as app or dw, rather than the local cluster name, such as main or prod.

Keep-alive count.

Specifies the number of TCP keep-alive messages that can be lost before the connection is considered dead.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPCNT socket option.

Keep-alive idle time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) with no network activity after which the operating system should send a TCP keep-alive message.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPIDLE socket option.

Keep-alive interval time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) after which a TCP keep-alive message that has not been acknowledged should be retransmitted.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPINTVL socket option.

Level for console logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for file logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for stderr logging.

Specifies which log levels will output to stderr rather than stdout (specified by log-level-console). The timestamp and process will not be output to stderr.

The following log levels are supported:

Path where log files are stored.

The log path provides a location for pgBackRest to store log files. Note that if log-level-file=off then no log path is required.

Enable logging in subprocesses.

Enable file logging for any subprocesses created by this process using the log level specified by log-level-file.

Enable timestamp in logging.

Enables the timestamp in console and file logging. This option is disabled in special situations such as generating documentation.

Set repository.

Set the repository for a command to operate on.

For example, this option may be used to perform a restore from a specific repository, rather than letting pgBackRest choose.

Azure repository container.

Azure container used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the container root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other Azure-generated content can also be stored in the container.

Azure repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

Azure URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

Cipher used to encrypt the repository.

The following cipher types are supported:

Note that encryption is always performed client-side even if the repository type (e.g. S3) supports encryption.

GCS repository bucket.

GCS bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other GCS-generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

GCS repository endpoint.

Endpoint used to connect to the storage service. May be updated to use a local GCS server or alternate endpoint.

GCS repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

When repo-gcs-key-type=service the credentials will be reloaded when the authentication token is renewed.

Repository host when operating remotely.

When backing up and archiving to a locally mounted filesystem this setting is not required.

Deprecated Name: backup-host

Repository host certificate authority file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for connecting to the repository host.

Repository host certificate authority path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for connecting to the repository host.

Repository host certificate file.

Sent to repository host to prove client identity.

Repository host pgBackRest command.

Required only if the path to the pgBackRest command is different on the local and repository hosts. If not defined, the repository host command will be set the same as the local command.

Deprecated Name: backup-cmd

pgBackRest repository host configuration file.

Sets the location of the configuration file on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration file is in a different location than the local configuration file.

Deprecated Name: backup-config

pgBackRest repository host configuration include path.

Sets the location of the configuration include path on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration include path is in a different location than the local configuration include path.

pgBackRest repository host configuration path.

Sets the location of the configuration path on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration path is in a different location than the local configuration path.

Repository host key file.

Proves client certificate was sent by owner.

Repository host port when repo-host is set.

Use this option to specify a non-default port for the repository host protocol.

Deprecated Name: backup-ssh-port

Repository host protocol type.

The following protocol types are supported:

Repository host user when repo-host is set.

Defines the user that will be used for operations on the repository host. Preferably this is not the postgres user but rather some other user like pgbackrest. If PostgreSQL runs on the repository host the postgres user can be placed in the pgbackrest group so it has read permissions on the repository without being able to damage the contents accidentally.

Deprecated Name: backup-user

Path where backups and archive are stored.

The repository is where pgBackRest stores backups and archives WAL segments.

It may be difficult to estimate in advance how much space you’ll need. The best thing to do is take some backups then record the size of different types of backups (full/incr/diff) and measure the amount of WAL generated per day. This will give you a general idea of how much space you’ll need, though of course requirements will likely change over time as your database evolves.

S3 repository bucket.

S3 bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other AWS generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

S3 repository endpoint.

The AWS endpoint should be valid for the selected region.

For custom/test configurations the repo-storage-ca-file, repo-storage-ca-path, repo-storage-host, repo-storage-port, and repo-storage-verify-tls options may be useful.

S3 repository key type.

The following types are supported:

S3 repository KMS key.

Setting this option enables S3 server-side encryption using the specified AWS key management service key.

S3 repository region.

The AWS region where the bucket was created.

S3 repository role.

The AWS role name (not the full ARN) used to retrieve temporary credentials when repo-s3-key-type=auto.

S3 URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

SFTP repository host.

The SFTP host containing the repository.

SFTP repository host fingerprint.

SFTP repository host fingerprint generation should match the repo-sftp-host-key-hash-type. Generate the fingerprint via awk '\{print $2}' ssh_host_xxx_key.pub | base64 -d | (md5sum or sha1sum) -b. The ssh host keys are normally found in the /etc/ssh directory.

SFTP host key check type.

The following SFTP host key check types are supported:

SFTP repository host key hash type.

SFTP repository host key hash type. Declares the hash type to be used to compute the digest of the remote system’s host key on SSH startup. Newer versions of libssh2 support sha256 in addition to md5 and sha1.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host user.

User on the host used to store the repository.

SFTP known hosts file.

A known hosts file to search for an SFTP host match during authentication. When unspecified, pgBackRest will default to searching ~/.ssh/known_hosts, ~/.ssh/known_hosts2, /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts, and /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts2. If configured with one or more file paths, pgBackRest will search those for a match. File paths must be full or leading tilde paths. The repo-sftp-known-host option can be passed multiple times to specify more than one known hosts file to search. To utilize known hosts file checking repo-sftp-host-fingerprint must not be specified. See also repo-sftp-host-check-type option.

SFTP private key file.

SFTP private key file used for authentication.

SFTP public key file.

SFTP public key file used for authentication. Optional if compiled against OpenSSL, required if compiled against a different library.

Repository storage CA file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-file, repo-s3-ca-file

Repository storage CA path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-path, repo-s3-ca-path

Repository storage host.

Connect to a host other than the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint. This is typically used for testing.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-host, repo-s3-host

Repository storage port.

Port to use when connecting to the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint (or host if specified).

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-port, repo-s3-port

Repository storage tag(s).

Specify tags that will be added to objects when the repository is an object store (e.g. S3). The option can be repeated to add multiple tags.

There is no provision in pgBackRest to modify these tags so be sure to set them correctly before running stanza-create to ensure uniform tags across the entire repository.

Repository storage upload chunk size.

Object stores such as S3 allow files to be uploaded in chunks when the file is too large to be stored in memory. Even if the file can be stored in memory, it is more memory efficient to limit the amount of memory used for uploads.

A larger chunk size will generally lead to better performance because it will minimize upload requests and allow more files to be uploaded in a single request rather than in chunks. The disadvantage is that memory usage will be higher and because the chunk buffer must be allocated per process, larger process-max values will lead to more memory being consumed overall.

Default chunk sizes by repo type:

Note that valid chunk sizes vary by storage type and by platform. For example, AWS S3 has a minimum chunk size of 5MiB but S3 clones may accept lower values. Terminology for chunk size varies by storage type, so when searching min/max values use “part size” for AWS S3, “chunk size” for GCS, and “block size” for Azure. No attempt is made to validate configured chunk sizes so selecting an invalid value will lead to errors from the storage service or undefined behavior.

Repository storage certificate verify.

This option provides the ability to enable/disable verification of the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) server TLS certificate. Disabling should only be used for testing or other scenarios where a certificate has been self-signed.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-verify-tls, repo-s3-verify-ssl, repo-s3-verify-tls

Type of storage used for the repository.

The following repository types are supported:

When an NFS mount is used as a posix repository, the same rules apply to pgBackRest as described in the PostgreSQL documentation: Creating a Database Cluster - File Systems.

Push/get WAL segments asynchronously.

Enables asynchronous operation for the archive-push and archive-get commands.

Asynchronous operation is more efficient because it can reuse connections and take advantage of parallelism. See the spool-path, archive-get-queue-max, and archive-push-queue-max options for more information.

Maximum size of the pgBackRest archive-get queue.

Specifies the maximum size of the archive-get queue when archive-async is enabled. The queue is stored in the spool-path and is used to speed providing WAL to PostgreSQL.

Retry missing WAL segment

Retry a WAL segment that was previously reported as missing by the archive-get command when in asynchronous mode. This prevents notifications in the spool path from a prior restore from being used and possibly causing a recovery failure if consistency has not been reached.

Disabling this option allows PostgreSQL to more reliably recognize when the end of the WAL in the archive has been reached, which permits it to switch over to streaming from the primary. With retries enabled, a steady stream of WAL being archived will cause PostgreSQL to continue getting WAL from the archive rather than switch to streaming.

When disabling this option it is important to ensure that the spool path for the stanza is empty. The restore command does this automatically if the spool path is configured at restore time. Otherwise, it is up to the user to ensure the spool path is empty.

Archive timeout.

Set maximum time, in seconds, to wait for each WAL segment to reach the pgBackRest archive repository. The timeout applies to the check and backup commands when waiting for WAL segments required for backup consistency to be archived.

Buffer size for I/O operations.

Buffer size used for copy, compress, encrypt, and other operations. The number of buffers used depends on options and each operation may use additional memory, e.g. gz compression may use an additional 256KiB of memory.

Allowed values are 16KiB, 32KiB, 64KiB, 128KiB, 256KiB, 512KiB, 1MiB, 2MiB, 4MiB, 8MiB, and 16MiB.

pgBackRest command.

pgBackRest may generate a command string, e.g. when the restore command generates the restore_command setting. The command used to run the pgBackRest process will be used in this case unless the cmd option is provided.

SSH client command.

Use a specific SSH client command when an alternate is desired or the ssh command is not in $PATH.

Network compression level.

Sets the network compression level when compress-type=none and the command is not run on the same host as the repository. Compression is used to reduce network traffic but can be disabled by setting compress-level-network=0. When compress-type does not equal none the compress-level-network setting is ignored and compress-level is used instead so that the file is only compressed once.

pgBackRest configuration file.

Use this option to specify a different configuration file than the default.

Path to additional pgBackRest configuration files.

Configuration files existing in the specified location with extension .conf will be concatenated with the pgBackRest configuration file, resulting in one configuration file.

Base path of pgBackRest configuration files.

This setting is used to override the default base path setting for the --config and --config-include-path options unless they are explicitly set on the command-line.

For example, passing only --config-path=/conf/pgbackrest results in the --config default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/pgbackrest.conf and the --config-include-path default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/conf.d.

Database query timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, for queries against the database. This includes the backup start/stop functions which can each take a substantial amount of time. Because of this the timeout should be kept high unless you know that these functions will return quickly (i.e. if you have set start-fast=y and you know that the database cluster will not generate many WAL segments during the backup).

I/O timeout.

Timeout, in seconds, used for connections and read/write operations.

Note that the entire read/write operation does not need to complete within this timeout but some progress must be made, even if it is only a single byte.

Path where lock files are stored.

The lock path provides a location for pgBackRest to create lock files to prevent conflicting operations from being run concurrently.

Use a neutral umask.

Sets the umask to 0000 so modes in the repository are created in a sensible way. The default directory mode is 0750 and default file mode is 0640. The lock and log directories set the directory and file mode to 0770 and 0660 respectively.

To use the executing user’s umask instead specify neutral-umask=n in the config file or --no-neutral-umask on the command line.

Max processes to use for compress/transfer.

Each process will perform compression and transfer to make the command run faster, but don’t set process-max so high that it impacts database performance.

Protocol timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, that the local or remote process will wait for a new message to be received on the protocol layer. This prevents processes from waiting indefinitely for a message.

Keep-alive enable.

Enables keep-alive messages on socket connections.

Path where transient data is stored.

This path is used to store data for the asynchronous archive-push and archive-get command.

The asynchronous archive-push command writes acknowledgements into the spool path when it has successfully stored WAL in the archive (and errors on failure) so the foreground process can quickly notify PostgreSQL. Acknowledgement files are very small (zero on success and a few hundred bytes on error).

The asynchronous archive-get command queues WAL in the spool path so it can be provided very quickly when PostgreSQL requests it. Moving files to PostgreSQL is most efficient when the spool path is on the same filesystem as pg_xlog/pg_wal.

The data stored in the spool path is not strictly temporary since it can and should survive a reboot. However, loss of the data in the spool path is not a problem. pgBackRest will simply recheck each WAL segment to ensure it is safely archived for archive-push and rebuild the queue for archive-get.

The spool path is intended to be located on a local Posix-compatible filesystem, not a remote filesystem such as NFS or CIFS.

Defines the stanza.

A stanza is the configuration for a PostgreSQL database cluster that defines where it is located, how it will be backed up, archiving options, etc. Most db servers will only have one PostgreSQL database cluster and therefore one stanza, whereas backup servers will have a stanza for every database cluster that needs to be backed up.

It is tempting to name the stanza after the primary cluster but a better name describes the databases contained in the cluster. Because the stanza name will be used for the primary and all replicas it is more appropriate to choose a name that describes the actual function of the cluster, such as app or dw, rather than the local cluster name, such as main or prod.

Keep-alive count.

Specifies the number of TCP keep-alive messages that can be lost before the connection is considered dead.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPCNT socket option.

Keep-alive idle time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) with no network activity after which the operating system should send a TCP keep-alive message.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPIDLE socket option.

Keep-alive interval time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) after which a TCP keep-alive message that has not been acknowledged should be retransmitted.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPINTVL socket option.

Level for console logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for file logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for stderr logging.

Specifies which log levels will output to stderr rather than stdout (specified by log-level-console). The timestamp and process will not be output to stderr.

The following log levels are supported:

Path where log files are stored.

The log path provides a location for pgBackRest to store log files. Note that if log-level-file=off then no log path is required.

Enable logging in subprocesses.

Enable file logging for any subprocesses created by this process using the log level specified by log-level-file.

Enable timestamp in logging.

Enables the timestamp in console and file logging. This option is disabled in special situations such as generating documentation.

Set repository.

Set the repository for a command to operate on.

For example, this option may be used to perform a restore from a specific repository, rather than letting pgBackRest choose.

Azure repository container.

Azure container used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the container root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other Azure-generated content can also be stored in the container.

Azure repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

Azure URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

Cipher used to encrypt the repository.

The following cipher types are supported:

Note that encryption is always performed client-side even if the repository type (e.g. S3) supports encryption.

GCS repository bucket.

GCS bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other GCS-generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

GCS repository endpoint.

Endpoint used to connect to the storage service. May be updated to use a local GCS server or alternate endpoint.

GCS repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

When repo-gcs-key-type=service the credentials will be reloaded when the authentication token is renewed.

Repository host when operating remotely.

When backing up and archiving to a locally mounted filesystem this setting is not required.

Deprecated Name: backup-host

Repository host certificate authority file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for connecting to the repository host.

Repository host certificate authority path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for connecting to the repository host.

Repository host certificate file.

Sent to repository host to prove client identity.

Repository host pgBackRest command.

Required only if the path to the pgBackRest command is different on the local and repository hosts. If not defined, the repository host command will be set the same as the local command.

Deprecated Name: backup-cmd

pgBackRest repository host configuration file.

Sets the location of the configuration file on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration file is in a different location than the local configuration file.

Deprecated Name: backup-config

pgBackRest repository host configuration include path.

Sets the location of the configuration include path on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration include path is in a different location than the local configuration include path.

pgBackRest repository host configuration path.

Sets the location of the configuration path on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration path is in a different location than the local configuration path.

Repository host key file.

Proves client certificate was sent by owner.

Repository host port when repo-host is set.

Use this option to specify a non-default port for the repository host protocol.

Deprecated Name: backup-ssh-port

Repository host protocol type.

The following protocol types are supported:

Repository host user when repo-host is set.

Defines the user that will be used for operations on the repository host. Preferably this is not the postgres user but rather some other user like pgbackrest. If PostgreSQL runs on the repository host the postgres user can be placed in the pgbackrest group so it has read permissions on the repository without being able to damage the contents accidentally.

Deprecated Name: backup-user

Path where backups and archive are stored.

The repository is where pgBackRest stores backups and archives WAL segments.

It may be difficult to estimate in advance how much space you’ll need. The best thing to do is take some backups then record the size of different types of backups (full/incr/diff) and measure the amount of WAL generated per day. This will give you a general idea of how much space you’ll need, though of course requirements will likely change over time as your database evolves.

S3 repository bucket.

S3 bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other AWS generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

S3 repository endpoint.

The AWS endpoint should be valid for the selected region.

For custom/test configurations the repo-storage-ca-file, repo-storage-ca-path, repo-storage-host, repo-storage-port, and repo-storage-verify-tls options may be useful.

S3 repository key type.

The following types are supported:

S3 repository KMS key.

Setting this option enables S3 server-side encryption using the specified AWS key management service key.

S3 repository region.

The AWS region where the bucket was created.

S3 repository role.

The AWS role name (not the full ARN) used to retrieve temporary credentials when repo-s3-key-type=auto.

S3 URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

SFTP repository host.

The SFTP host containing the repository.

SFTP repository host fingerprint.

SFTP repository host fingerprint generation should match the repo-sftp-host-key-hash-type. Generate the fingerprint via awk '\{print $2}' ssh_host_xxx_key.pub | base64 -d | (md5sum or sha1sum) -b. The ssh host keys are normally found in the /etc/ssh directory.

SFTP host key check type.

The following SFTP host key check types are supported:

SFTP repository host key hash type.

SFTP repository host key hash type. Declares the hash type to be used to compute the digest of the remote system’s host key on SSH startup. Newer versions of libssh2 support sha256 in addition to md5 and sha1.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host user.

User on the host used to store the repository.

SFTP known hosts file.

A known hosts file to search for an SFTP host match during authentication. When unspecified, pgBackRest will default to searching ~/.ssh/known_hosts, ~/.ssh/known_hosts2, /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts, and /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts2. If configured with one or more file paths, pgBackRest will search those for a match. File paths must be full or leading tilde paths. The repo-sftp-known-host option can be passed multiple times to specify more than one known hosts file to search. To utilize known hosts file checking repo-sftp-host-fingerprint must not be specified. See also repo-sftp-host-check-type option.

SFTP private key file.

SFTP private key file used for authentication.

SFTP public key file.

SFTP public key file used for authentication. Optional if compiled against OpenSSL, required if compiled against a different library.

Repository storage CA file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-file, repo-s3-ca-file

Repository storage CA path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-path, repo-s3-ca-path

Repository storage host.

Connect to a host other than the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint. This is typically used for testing.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-host, repo-s3-host

Repository storage port.

Port to use when connecting to the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint (or host if specified).

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-port, repo-s3-port

Repository storage tag(s).

Specify tags that will be added to objects when the repository is an object store (e.g. S3). The option can be repeated to add multiple tags.

There is no provision in pgBackRest to modify these tags so be sure to set them correctly before running stanza-create to ensure uniform tags across the entire repository.

Repository storage upload chunk size.

Object stores such as S3 allow files to be uploaded in chunks when the file is too large to be stored in memory. Even if the file can be stored in memory, it is more memory efficient to limit the amount of memory used for uploads.

A larger chunk size will generally lead to better performance because it will minimize upload requests and allow more files to be uploaded in a single request rather than in chunks. The disadvantage is that memory usage will be higher and because the chunk buffer must be allocated per process, larger process-max values will lead to more memory being consumed overall.

Default chunk sizes by repo type:

Note that valid chunk sizes vary by storage type and by platform. For example, AWS S3 has a minimum chunk size of 5MiB but S3 clones may accept lower values. Terminology for chunk size varies by storage type, so when searching min/max values use “part size” for AWS S3, “chunk size” for GCS, and “block size” for Azure. No attempt is made to validate configured chunk sizes so selecting an invalid value will lead to errors from the storage service or undefined behavior.

Repository storage certificate verify.

This option provides the ability to enable/disable verification of the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) server TLS certificate. Disabling should only be used for testing or other scenarios where a certificate has been self-signed.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-verify-tls, repo-s3-verify-ssl, repo-s3-verify-tls

Type of storage used for the repository.

The following repository types are supported:

When an NFS mount is used as a posix repository, the same rules apply to pgBackRest as described in the PostgreSQL documentation: Creating a Database Cluster - File Systems.

PostgreSQL data directory.

This should be the same as the data_directory setting in postgresql.conf. Even though this value can be read from postgresql.conf or PostgreSQL it is prudent to set it in case those resources are not available during a restore or offline backup scenario.

The pg-path option is tested against the value reported by PostgreSQL on every online backup so it should always be current.

Deprecated Name: db-path

Push/get WAL segments asynchronously.

Enables asynchronous operation for the archive-push and archive-get commands.

Asynchronous operation is more efficient because it can reuse connections and take advantage of parallelism. See the spool-path, archive-get-queue-max, and archive-push-queue-max options for more information.

Check that WAL segments are in the archive before backup completes.

Checks that all WAL segments required to make the backup consistent are present in the WAL archive. It’s a good idea to leave this as the default unless you are using another method for archiving.

This option must be enabled if archive-copy is enabled.

Check PostgreSQL version/id in WAL headers.

Enabled by default, this option checks the WAL header against the PostgreSQL version and system identifier to ensure that the WAL is being copied to the correct stanza. This is in addition to checking pg_control against the stanza and verifying that WAL is being copied from the same PostgreSQL data directory where pg_control is located.

Therefore, disabling this check is fairly safe but should only be done when needed, e.g. if the WAL is encrypted.

Check the PostgreSQL archive_mode setting.

Enabled by default, this option disallows PostgreSQL archive_mode=always.

WAL segments pushed from a standby server might be logically the same as WAL segments pushed from the primary but have different checksums. Disabling archiving from multiple sources is recommended to avoid conflicts.

Maximum size of the PostgreSQL archive queue.

After the limit is reached, the following will happen:

If this occurs then the archive log stream will be interrupted and PITR will not be possible past that point. A new backup will be required to regain full restore capability.

In asynchronous mode the entire queue will be dropped to prevent spurts of WAL getting through before the queue limit is exceeded again.

The purpose of this feature is to prevent the log volume from filling up at which point PostgreSQL will stop completely. Better to lose the backup than have PostgreSQL go down.

Deprecated Name: archive-queue-max

Archive timeout.

Set maximum time, in seconds, to wait for each WAL segment to reach the pgBackRest archive repository. The timeout applies to the check and backup commands when waiting for WAL segments required for backup consistency to be archived.

Buffer size for I/O operations.

Buffer size used for copy, compress, encrypt, and other operations. The number of buffers used depends on options and each operation may use additional memory, e.g. gz compression may use an additional 256KiB of memory.

Allowed values are 16KiB, 32KiB, 64KiB, 128KiB, 256KiB, 512KiB, 1MiB, 2MiB, 4MiB, 8MiB, and 16MiB.

pgBackRest command.

pgBackRest may generate a command string, e.g. when the restore command generates the restore_command setting. The command used to run the pgBackRest process will be used in this case unless the cmd option is provided.

SSH client command.

Use a specific SSH client command when an alternate is desired or the ssh command is not in $PATH.

Use file compression.

Backup files are compatible with command-line compression tools.

This option is now deprecated. The compress-type option should be used instead.

File compression level.

Sets the level to be used for file compression when compress-type does not equal none or compress=y (deprecated).

The following are the defaults levels based on compress-type when compress-level is not specified:

Network compression level.

Sets the network compression level when compress-type=none and the command is not run on the same host as the repository. Compression is used to reduce network traffic but can be disabled by setting compress-level-network=0. When compress-type does not equal none the compress-level-network setting is ignored and compress-level is used instead so that the file is only compressed once.

File compression type.

The following compression types are supported:

pgBackRest configuration file.

Use this option to specify a different configuration file than the default.

Path to additional pgBackRest configuration files.

Configuration files existing in the specified location with extension .conf will be concatenated with the pgBackRest configuration file, resulting in one configuration file.

Base path of pgBackRest configuration files.

This setting is used to override the default base path setting for the --config and --config-include-path options unless they are explicitly set on the command-line.

For example, passing only --config-path=/conf/pgbackrest results in the --config default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/pgbackrest.conf and the --config-include-path default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/conf.d.

Database query timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, for queries against the database. This includes the backup start/stop functions which can each take a substantial amount of time. Because of this the timeout should be kept high unless you know that these functions will return quickly (i.e. if you have set start-fast=y and you know that the database cluster will not generate many WAL segments during the backup).

I/O timeout.

Timeout, in seconds, used for connections and read/write operations.

Note that the entire read/write operation does not need to complete within this timeout but some progress must be made, even if it is only a single byte.

Path where lock files are stored.

The lock path provides a location for pgBackRest to create lock files to prevent conflicting operations from being run concurrently.

Use a neutral umask.

Sets the umask to 0000 so modes in the repository are created in a sensible way. The default directory mode is 0750 and default file mode is 0640. The lock and log directories set the directory and file mode to 0770 and 0660 respectively.

To use the executing user’s umask instead specify neutral-umask=n in the config file or --no-neutral-umask on the command line.

Max processes to use for compress/transfer.

Each process will perform compression and transfer to make the command run faster, but don’t set process-max so high that it impacts database performance.

Protocol timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, that the local or remote process will wait for a new message to be received on the protocol layer. This prevents processes from waiting indefinitely for a message.

Keep-alive enable.

Enables keep-alive messages on socket connections.

Path where transient data is stored.

This path is used to store data for the asynchronous archive-push and archive-get command.

The asynchronous archive-push command writes acknowledgements into the spool path when it has successfully stored WAL in the archive (and errors on failure) so the foreground process can quickly notify PostgreSQL. Acknowledgement files are very small (zero on success and a few hundred bytes on error).

The asynchronous archive-get command queues WAL in the spool path so it can be provided very quickly when PostgreSQL requests it. Moving files to PostgreSQL is most efficient when the spool path is on the same filesystem as pg_xlog/pg_wal.

The data stored in the spool path is not strictly temporary since it can and should survive a reboot. However, loss of the data in the spool path is not a problem. pgBackRest will simply recheck each WAL segment to ensure it is safely archived for archive-push and rebuild the queue for archive-get.

The spool path is intended to be located on a local Posix-compatible filesystem, not a remote filesystem such as NFS or CIFS.

Defines the stanza.

A stanza is the configuration for a PostgreSQL database cluster that defines where it is located, how it will be backed up, archiving options, etc. Most db servers will only have one PostgreSQL database cluster and therefore one stanza, whereas backup servers will have a stanza for every database cluster that needs to be backed up.

It is tempting to name the stanza after the primary cluster but a better name describes the databases contained in the cluster. Because the stanza name will be used for the primary and all replicas it is more appropriate to choose a name that describes the actual function of the cluster, such as app or dw, rather than the local cluster name, such as main or prod.

Keep-alive count.

Specifies the number of TCP keep-alive messages that can be lost before the connection is considered dead.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPCNT socket option.

Keep-alive idle time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) with no network activity after which the operating system should send a TCP keep-alive message.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPIDLE socket option.

Keep-alive interval time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) after which a TCP keep-alive message that has not been acknowledged should be retransmitted.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPINTVL socket option.

Level for console logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for file logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for stderr logging.

Specifies which log levels will output to stderr rather than stdout (specified by log-level-console). The timestamp and process will not be output to stderr.

The following log levels are supported:

Path where log files are stored.

The log path provides a location for pgBackRest to store log files. Note that if log-level-file=off then no log path is required.

Enable logging in subprocesses.

Enable file logging for any subprocesses created by this process using the log level specified by log-level-file.

Enable timestamp in logging.

Enables the timestamp in console and file logging. This option is disabled in special situations such as generating documentation.

Azure repository container.

Azure container used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the container root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other Azure-generated content can also be stored in the container.

Azure repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

Azure URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

Cipher used to encrypt the repository.

The following cipher types are supported:

Note that encryption is always performed client-side even if the repository type (e.g. S3) supports encryption.

GCS repository bucket.

GCS bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other GCS-generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

GCS repository endpoint.

Endpoint used to connect to the storage service. May be updated to use a local GCS server or alternate endpoint.

GCS repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

When repo-gcs-key-type=service the credentials will be reloaded when the authentication token is renewed.

Repository host when operating remotely.

When backing up and archiving to a locally mounted filesystem this setting is not required.

Deprecated Name: backup-host

Repository host certificate authority file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for connecting to the repository host.

Repository host certificate authority path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for connecting to the repository host.

Repository host certificate file.

Sent to repository host to prove client identity.

Repository host pgBackRest command.

Required only if the path to the pgBackRest command is different on the local and repository hosts. If not defined, the repository host command will be set the same as the local command.

Deprecated Name: backup-cmd

pgBackRest repository host configuration file.

Sets the location of the configuration file on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration file is in a different location than the local configuration file.

Deprecated Name: backup-config

pgBackRest repository host configuration include path.

Sets the location of the configuration include path on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration include path is in a different location than the local configuration include path.

pgBackRest repository host configuration path.

Sets the location of the configuration path on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration path is in a different location than the local configuration path.

Repository host key file.

Proves client certificate was sent by owner.

Repository host port when repo-host is set.

Use this option to specify a non-default port for the repository host protocol.

Deprecated Name: backup-ssh-port

Repository host protocol type.

The following protocol types are supported:

Repository host user when repo-host is set.

Defines the user that will be used for operations on the repository host. Preferably this is not the postgres user but rather some other user like pgbackrest. If PostgreSQL runs on the repository host the postgres user can be placed in the pgbackrest group so it has read permissions on the repository without being able to damage the contents accidentally.

Deprecated Name: backup-user

Path where backups and archive are stored.

The repository is where pgBackRest stores backups and archives WAL segments.

It may be difficult to estimate in advance how much space you’ll need. The best thing to do is take some backups then record the size of different types of backups (full/incr/diff) and measure the amount of WAL generated per day. This will give you a general idea of how much space you’ll need, though of course requirements will likely change over time as your database evolves.

S3 repository bucket.

S3 bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other AWS generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

S3 repository endpoint.

The AWS endpoint should be valid for the selected region.

For custom/test configurations the repo-storage-ca-file, repo-storage-ca-path, repo-storage-host, repo-storage-port, and repo-storage-verify-tls options may be useful.

S3 repository key type.

The following types are supported:

S3 repository KMS key.

Setting this option enables S3 server-side encryption using the specified AWS key management service key.

S3 repository region.

The AWS region where the bucket was created.

S3 repository role.

The AWS role name (not the full ARN) used to retrieve temporary credentials when repo-s3-key-type=auto.

S3 URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

SFTP repository host.

The SFTP host containing the repository.

SFTP repository host fingerprint.

SFTP repository host fingerprint generation should match the repo-sftp-host-key-hash-type. Generate the fingerprint via awk '\{print $2}' ssh_host_xxx_key.pub | base64 -d | (md5sum or sha1sum) -b. The ssh host keys are normally found in the /etc/ssh directory.

SFTP host key check type.

The following SFTP host key check types are supported:

SFTP repository host key hash type.

SFTP repository host key hash type. Declares the hash type to be used to compute the digest of the remote system’s host key on SSH startup. Newer versions of libssh2 support sha256 in addition to md5 and sha1.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host user.

User on the host used to store the repository.

SFTP known hosts file.

A known hosts file to search for an SFTP host match during authentication. When unspecified, pgBackRest will default to searching ~/.ssh/known_hosts, ~/.ssh/known_hosts2, /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts, and /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts2. If configured with one or more file paths, pgBackRest will search those for a match. File paths must be full or leading tilde paths. The repo-sftp-known-host option can be passed multiple times to specify more than one known hosts file to search. To utilize known hosts file checking repo-sftp-host-fingerprint must not be specified. See also repo-sftp-host-check-type option.

SFTP private key file.

SFTP private key file used for authentication.

SFTP public key file.

SFTP public key file used for authentication. Optional if compiled against OpenSSL, required if compiled against a different library.

Repository storage CA file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-file, repo-s3-ca-file

Repository storage CA path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-path, repo-s3-ca-path

Repository storage host.

Connect to a host other than the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint. This is typically used for testing.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-host, repo-s3-host

Repository storage port.

Port to use when connecting to the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint (or host if specified).

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-port, repo-s3-port

Repository storage tag(s).

Specify tags that will be added to objects when the repository is an object store (e.g. S3). The option can be repeated to add multiple tags.

There is no provision in pgBackRest to modify these tags so be sure to set them correctly before running stanza-create to ensure uniform tags across the entire repository.

Repository storage upload chunk size.

Object stores such as S3 allow files to be uploaded in chunks when the file is too large to be stored in memory. Even if the file can be stored in memory, it is more memory efficient to limit the amount of memory used for uploads.

A larger chunk size will generally lead to better performance because it will minimize upload requests and allow more files to be uploaded in a single request rather than in chunks. The disadvantage is that memory usage will be higher and because the chunk buffer must be allocated per process, larger process-max values will lead to more memory being consumed overall.

Default chunk sizes by repo type:

Note that valid chunk sizes vary by storage type and by platform. For example, AWS S3 has a minimum chunk size of 5MiB but S3 clones may accept lower values. Terminology for chunk size varies by storage type, so when searching min/max values use “part size” for AWS S3, “chunk size” for GCS, and “block size” for Azure. No attempt is made to validate configured chunk sizes so selecting an invalid value will lead to errors from the storage service or undefined behavior.

Repository storage certificate verify.

This option provides the ability to enable/disable verification of the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) server TLS certificate. Disabling should only be used for testing or other scenarios where a certificate has been self-signed.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-verify-tls, repo-s3-verify-ssl, repo-s3-verify-tls

Type of storage used for the repository.

The following repository types are supported:

When an NFS mount is used as a posix repository, the same rules apply to pgBackRest as described in the PostgreSQL documentation: Creating a Database Cluster - File Systems.

PostgreSQL data directory.

This should be the same as the data_directory setting in postgresql.conf. Even though this value can be read from postgresql.conf or PostgreSQL it is prudent to set it in case those resources are not available during a restore or offline backup scenario.

The pg-path option is tested against the value reported by PostgreSQL on every online backup so it should always be current.

Deprecated Name: db-path

Annotate backup with user-defined key/value pairs.

Users can attach informative key/value pairs to the backup. This option may be used multiple times to attach multiple annotations.

Annotations are output by the info command text output when a backup is specified with --set and always appear in the JSON output.

Check that WAL segments are in the archive before backup completes.

Checks that all WAL segments required to make the backup consistent are present in the WAL archive. It’s a good idea to leave this as the default unless you are using another method for archiving.

This option must be enabled if archive-copy is enabled.

Copy WAL segments needed for consistency to the backup.

This slightly paranoid option protects against corruption in the WAL segment archive by storing the WAL segments required for consistency directly in the backup. WAL segments are still stored in the archive so this option will use additional space.

It is best if the archive-push and backup commands have the same compress-type (e.g. lz4) when using this option. Otherwise, the WAL segments will need to be recompressed with the compress-type used by the backup, which can be fairly expensive depending on how much WAL was generated during the backup.

On restore, the WAL segments will be present in pg_xlog/pg_wal and PostgreSQL will use them in preference to calling the restore_command.

The archive-check option must be enabled if archive-copy is enabled.

Check the PostgreSQL archive_mode setting.

Enabled by default, this option disallows PostgreSQL archive_mode=always.

WAL segments pushed from a standby server might be logically the same as WAL segments pushed from the primary but have different checksums. Disabling archiving from multiple sources is recommended to avoid conflicts.

Archive timeout.

Set maximum time, in seconds, to wait for each WAL segment to reach the pgBackRest archive repository. The timeout applies to the check and backup commands when waiting for WAL segments required for backup consistency to be archived.

Backup from the standby cluster.

Enable backup from standby to reduce load on the primary cluster. This option requires that both the primary and standby hosts be configured.

Validate data page checksums.

Directs pgBackRest to validate all data page checksums while backing up a cluster. This option is automatically enabled when data page checksums are enabled on the cluster.

Failures in checksum validation will not abort a backup. Rather, warnings will be emitted in the log (and to the console with default settings) and the list of invalid pages will be stored in the backup manifest.

Exclude paths/files from the backup.

All exclusions are relative to $PGDATA. If the exclusion ends with / then only files in the specified directory will be excluded, e.g. --exclude=junk/ will exclude all files in the $PGDATA/junk directory but include the directory itself. If the exclusion does not end with / then the file may match the exclusion exactly or match with / appended to the exclusion, e.g. --exclude=junk will exclude the $PGDATA/junk directory and all the files it contains.

Be careful using this feature — it is very easy to exclude something critical that will make the backup inconsistent. Be sure to test your restores!

All excluded files will be logged at info level along with the exclusion rule. Be sure to audit the list of excluded files to ensure nothing unexpected is being excluded.

This option should not be used to exclude PostgreSQL logs from a backup. Logs can be moved out of the PGDATA directory using the PostgreSQL log_directory setting, which has the benefit of allowing logs to be preserved after a restore.

Multiple exclusions may be specified on the command-line or in a configuration file.

Automatically run the expire command after a successful backup.

The setting is enabled by default. Use caution when disabling this option as doing so will result in retaining all backups and archives indefinitely, which could cause your repository to run out of space. The expire command will need to be run regularly to prevent this from happening.

Force an offline backup.

When used with --no-start-stop a backup will be run even if pgBackRest thinks that PostgreSQL is running. This option should be used with extreme care as it will likely result in a bad backup.

There are some scenarios where a backup might still be desirable under these conditions. For example, if a server crashes and the database cluster volume can only be mounted read-only, it would be a good idea to take a backup even if postmaster.pid is present. In this case it would be better to revert to the prior backup and replay WAL, but possibly there is a very important transaction in a WAL segment that did not get archived.

Manifest save threshold during backup.

Defines how often the manifest will be saved during a backup. Saving the manifest is important because it stores the checksums and allows the resume function to work efficiently. The actual threshold used is 1% of the backup size or manifest-save-threshold, whichever is greater.

Perform an online backup.

Specifying --no-online prevents pgBackRest from running the backup start/stop functions on the database cluster. In order for this to work PostgreSQL should be shut down and pgBackRest will generate an error if it is not.

The purpose of this option is to allow offline backups. The pg_xlog/pg_wal directory is copied as-is and archive-check is automatically disabled for the backup.

Check PostgreSQL page headers.

Enabled by default, this option adds page header checks.

Disabling this option should be avoided except when necessary, e.g. if pages are encrypted.

Allow resume of failed backup.

Defines whether the resume feature is enabled. Resume can greatly reduce the amount of time required to run a backup after a previous backup of the same type has failed. It adds complexity, however, so it may be desirable to disable in environments that do not require the feature.

Force a checkpoint to start backup quickly.

Forces a checkpoint (by passing y to the fast parameter of the backup start function) so the backup begins immediately. Otherwise the backup will start after the next regular checkpoint.

Stop prior failed backup on new backup.

This will only be done if an exclusive advisory lock can be acquired to demonstrate that the prior failed backup process has really stopped.

This feature relies on pg_is_in_backup() so only works on PostgreSQL >= 9.3.

This feature is not supported for PostgreSQL >= 9.6 since backups are run in non-exclusive mode.

The setting is disabled by default because it assumes that pgBackRest is the only process doing exclusive online backups. It depends on an advisory lock that only pgBackRest sets so it may abort other processes that do exclusive online backups. Note that base_backup and pg_dump are safe to use with this setting because they do not call pg_start_backup() so are not exclusive.

Backup type.

The following backup types are supported:

Buffer size for I/O operations.

Buffer size used for copy, compress, encrypt, and other operations. The number of buffers used depends on options and each operation may use additional memory, e.g. gz compression may use an additional 256KiB of memory.

Allowed values are 16KiB, 32KiB, 64KiB, 128KiB, 256KiB, 512KiB, 1MiB, 2MiB, 4MiB, 8MiB, and 16MiB.

pgBackRest command.

pgBackRest may generate a command string, e.g. when the restore command generates the restore_command setting. The command used to run the pgBackRest process will be used in this case unless the cmd option is provided.

SSH client command.

Use a specific SSH client command when an alternate is desired or the ssh command is not in $PATH.

Use file compression.

Backup files are compatible with command-line compression tools.

This option is now deprecated. The compress-type option should be used instead.

File compression level.

Sets the level to be used for file compression when compress-type does not equal none or compress=y (deprecated).

The following are the defaults levels based on compress-type when compress-level is not specified:

Network compression level.

Sets the network compression level when compress-type=none and the command is not run on the same host as the repository. Compression is used to reduce network traffic but can be disabled by setting compress-level-network=0. When compress-type does not equal none the compress-level-network setting is ignored and compress-level is used instead so that the file is only compressed once.

File compression type.

The following compression types are supported:

pgBackRest configuration file.

Use this option to specify a different configuration file than the default.

Path to additional pgBackRest configuration files.

Configuration files existing in the specified location with extension .conf will be concatenated with the pgBackRest configuration file, resulting in one configuration file.

Base path of pgBackRest configuration files.

This setting is used to override the default base path setting for the --config and --config-include-path options unless they are explicitly set on the command-line.

For example, passing only --config-path=/conf/pgbackrest results in the --config default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/pgbackrest.conf and the --config-include-path default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/conf.d.

Database query timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, for queries against the database. This includes the backup start/stop functions which can each take a substantial amount of time. Because of this the timeout should be kept high unless you know that these functions will return quickly (i.e. if you have set start-fast=y and you know that the database cluster will not generate many WAL segments during the backup).

Restore or backup using checksums.

During a restore, by default the PostgreSQL data and tablespace directories are expected to be present but empty. This option performs a delta restore using checksums.

During a backup, this option will use checksums instead of the timestamps to determine if files will be copied.

I/O timeout.

Timeout, in seconds, used for connections and read/write operations.

Note that the entire read/write operation does not need to complete within this timeout but some progress must be made, even if it is only a single byte.

Path where lock files are stored.

The lock path provides a location for pgBackRest to create lock files to prevent conflicting operations from being run concurrently.

Use a neutral umask.

Sets the umask to 0000 so modes in the repository are created in a sensible way. The default directory mode is 0750 and default file mode is 0640. The lock and log directories set the directory and file mode to 0770 and 0660 respectively.

To use the executing user’s umask instead specify neutral-umask=n in the config file or --no-neutral-umask on the command line.

Max processes to use for compress/transfer.

Each process will perform compression and transfer to make the command run faster, but don’t set process-max so high that it impacts database performance.

Protocol timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, that the local or remote process will wait for a new message to be received on the protocol layer. This prevents processes from waiting indefinitely for a message.

Keep-alive enable.

Enables keep-alive messages on socket connections.

Defines the stanza.

A stanza is the configuration for a PostgreSQL database cluster that defines where it is located, how it will be backed up, archiving options, etc. Most db servers will only have one PostgreSQL database cluster and therefore one stanza, whereas backup servers will have a stanza for every database cluster that needs to be backed up.

It is tempting to name the stanza after the primary cluster but a better name describes the databases contained in the cluster. Because the stanza name will be used for the primary and all replicas it is more appropriate to choose a name that describes the actual function of the cluster, such as app or dw, rather than the local cluster name, such as main or prod.

Keep-alive count.

Specifies the number of TCP keep-alive messages that can be lost before the connection is considered dead.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPCNT socket option.

Keep-alive idle time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) with no network activity after which the operating system should send a TCP keep-alive message.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPIDLE socket option.

Keep-alive interval time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) after which a TCP keep-alive message that has not been acknowledged should be retransmitted.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPINTVL socket option.

Level for console logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for file logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for stderr logging.

Specifies which log levels will output to stderr rather than stdout (specified by log-level-console). The timestamp and process will not be output to stderr.

The following log levels are supported:

Path where log files are stored.

The log path provides a location for pgBackRest to store log files. Note that if log-level-file=off then no log path is required.

Enable logging in subprocesses.

Enable file logging for any subprocesses created by this process using the log level specified by log-level-file.

Enable timestamp in logging.

Enables the timestamp in console and file logging. This option is disabled in special situations such as generating documentation.

Set repository.

Set the repository for a command to operate on.

For example, this option may be used to perform a restore from a specific repository, rather than letting pgBackRest choose.

Azure repository container.

Azure container used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the container root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other Azure-generated content can also be stored in the container.

Azure repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

Azure URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

Enable block incremental backup.

Block incremental allows for more granular backups by splitting files into blocks that can be backed up independently. This saves space in the repository and can improve delta restore performance because individual blocks can be fetched without reading the entire file from the repository.

The block size for a file is determined based on the file size and age. Generally, older/larger files will get larger block sizes. If a file is old enough, it will not be backed up using block incremental.

Block incremental is most efficient when enabled for all backup types, including full. This makes the full a bit larger but subsequent differential and incremental backups can make use of the block maps generated by the full backup to save space.

Bundle files in repository.

Bundle (combine) smaller files to reduce the total number of files written to the repository. Writing fewer files is generally more efficient, especially on object stores such as S3. In addition, zero-length files are not stored (except in the manifest), which saves time and space.

Limit for file bundles.

Size limit for files that will be included in bundles. Files larger than this size will be stored separately.

Bundled files cannot be reused when a backup is resumed, so this option controls the files that can be resumed, i.e. higher values result in fewer resumable files.

Target size for file bundles.

Defines the total size of files that will be added to a single bundle. Most bundles will be smaller than this size but it is possible that some will be slightly larger, so do not set this option to the maximum size that your file system allows.

In general, it is not a good idea to set this option too high because retries will need to redo the entire bundle.

Cipher used to encrypt the repository.

The following cipher types are supported:

Note that encryption is always performed client-side even if the repository type (e.g. S3) supports encryption.

GCS repository bucket.

GCS bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other GCS-generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

GCS repository endpoint.

Endpoint used to connect to the storage service. May be updated to use a local GCS server or alternate endpoint.

GCS repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

When repo-gcs-key-type=service the credentials will be reloaded when the authentication token is renewed.

Hardlink files between backups in the repository.

Enable hard-linking of files in differential and incremental backups to their full backups. This gives the appearance that each backup is a full backup at the file-system level. Be careful, though, because modifying files that are hard-linked can affect all the backups in the set.

Deprecated Name: hardlink

Path where backups and archive are stored.

The repository is where pgBackRest stores backups and archives WAL segments.

It may be difficult to estimate in advance how much space you’ll need. The best thing to do is take some backups then record the size of different types of backups (full/incr/diff) and measure the amount of WAL generated per day. This will give you a general idea of how much space you’ll need, though of course requirements will likely change over time as your database evolves.

Number of backups worth of continuous WAL to retain.

If this value is not set and repo-retention-full-type is count (default), then the archive to expire will default to the repo-retention-full (or repo-retention-diff) value corresponding to the repo-retention-archive-type if set to full (or diff). This will ensure that WAL is only expired for backups that are already expired. If repo-retention-full-type is time, then this value will default to removing archives that are earlier than the oldest full backup retained after satisfying the repo-retention-full setting.

This option must be set if repo-retention-archive-type is set to incr. If disk space is at a premium, then this setting, in conjunction with repo-retention-archive-type, can be used to aggressively expire WAL segments. However, doing so negates the ability to perform PITR from the backups with expired WAL and is therefore not recommended.

Deprecated Name: retention-archive

Backup type for WAL retention.

If set to full pgBackRest will keep archive logs for the number of full backups defined by repo-retention-archive. If set to diff (differential) pgBackRest will keep archive logs for the number of full and differential backups defined by repo-retention-archive, meaning if the last backup taken was a full backup, it will be counted as a differential for the purpose of repo-retention. If set to incr (incremental) pgBackRest will keep archive logs for the number of full, differential, and incremental backups defined by repo-retention-archive. It is recommended that this setting not be changed from the default which will only expire WAL in conjunction with expiring full backups.

Deprecated Name: retention-archive-type

Number of differential backups to retain.

When a differential backup expires, all incremental backups associated with the differential backup will also expire. When not defined all differential backups will be kept until the full backups they depend on expire.

Deprecated Name: retention-diff

Full backup retention count/time.

When a full backup expires, all differential and incremental backups associated with the full backup will also expire. When the option is not defined a warning will be issued. If indefinite retention is desired then set the option to the max value.

Deprecated Name: retention-full

Retention type for full backups.

Determines whether the repo-retention-full setting represents a time period (days) or count of full backups to keep. If set to time then full backups older than repo-retention-full will be removed from the repository if there is at least one backup that is equal to or greater than the repo-retention-full setting. For example, if repo-retention-full is 30 (days) and there are 2 full backups: one 25 days old and one 35 days old, no full backups will be expired because expiring the 35 day old backup would leave only the 25 day old backup, which would violate the 30 day retention policy of having at least one backup 30 days old before an older one can be expired. Archived WAL older than the oldest full backup remaining will be automatically expired unless repo-retention-archive-type and repo-retention-archive are explicitly set.

Days of backup history manifests to retain.

A copy of the backup manifest is stored in the backup.history path when a backup completes. By default these files are never expired since they are useful for data mining, e.g. measuring backup and WAL growth over time.

Set repo-retention-history to define the number of days of backup history manifests to retain. Unexpired backups are always kept in the backup history. Specify repo-retention-history=0 to retain the backup history only for unexpired backups.

When a full backup history manifest is expired, all differential and incremental backup history manifests associated with the full backup also expire.

S3 repository bucket.

S3 bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other AWS generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

S3 repository endpoint.

The AWS endpoint should be valid for the selected region.

For custom/test configurations the repo-storage-ca-file, repo-storage-ca-path, repo-storage-host, repo-storage-port, and repo-storage-verify-tls options may be useful.

S3 repository key type.

The following types are supported:

S3 repository KMS key.

Setting this option enables S3 server-side encryption using the specified AWS key management service key.

S3 repository region.

The AWS region where the bucket was created.

S3 repository role.

The AWS role name (not the full ARN) used to retrieve temporary credentials when repo-s3-key-type=auto.

S3 URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

SFTP repository host.

The SFTP host containing the repository.

SFTP repository host fingerprint.

SFTP repository host fingerprint generation should match the repo-sftp-host-key-hash-type. Generate the fingerprint via awk '\{print $2}' ssh_host_xxx_key.pub | base64 -d | (md5sum or sha1sum) -b. The ssh host keys are normally found in the /etc/ssh directory.

SFTP host key check type.

The following SFTP host key check types are supported:

SFTP repository host key hash type.

SFTP repository host key hash type. Declares the hash type to be used to compute the digest of the remote system’s host key on SSH startup. Newer versions of libssh2 support sha256 in addition to md5 and sha1.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host user.

User on the host used to store the repository.

SFTP known hosts file.

A known hosts file to search for an SFTP host match during authentication. When unspecified, pgBackRest will default to searching ~/.ssh/known_hosts, ~/.ssh/known_hosts2, /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts, and /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts2. If configured with one or more file paths, pgBackRest will search those for a match. File paths must be full or leading tilde paths. The repo-sftp-known-host option can be passed multiple times to specify more than one known hosts file to search. To utilize known hosts file checking repo-sftp-host-fingerprint must not be specified. See also repo-sftp-host-check-type option.

SFTP private key file.

SFTP private key file used for authentication.

SFTP public key file.

SFTP public key file used for authentication. Optional if compiled against OpenSSL, required if compiled against a different library.

Repository storage CA file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-file, repo-s3-ca-file

Repository storage CA path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-path, repo-s3-ca-path

Repository storage host.

Connect to a host other than the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint. This is typically used for testing.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-host, repo-s3-host

Repository storage port.

Port to use when connecting to the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint (or host if specified).

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-port, repo-s3-port

Repository storage tag(s).

Specify tags that will be added to objects when the repository is an object store (e.g. S3). The option can be repeated to add multiple tags.

There is no provision in pgBackRest to modify these tags so be sure to set them correctly before running stanza-create to ensure uniform tags across the entire repository.

Repository storage upload chunk size.

Object stores such as S3 allow files to be uploaded in chunks when the file is too large to be stored in memory. Even if the file can be stored in memory, it is more memory efficient to limit the amount of memory used for uploads.

A larger chunk size will generally lead to better performance because it will minimize upload requests and allow more files to be uploaded in a single request rather than in chunks. The disadvantage is that memory usage will be higher and because the chunk buffer must be allocated per process, larger process-max values will lead to more memory being consumed overall.

Default chunk sizes by repo type:

Note that valid chunk sizes vary by storage type and by platform. For example, AWS S3 has a minimum chunk size of 5MiB but S3 clones may accept lower values. Terminology for chunk size varies by storage type, so when searching min/max values use “part size” for AWS S3, “chunk size” for GCS, and “block size” for Azure. No attempt is made to validate configured chunk sizes so selecting an invalid value will lead to errors from the storage service or undefined behavior.

Repository storage certificate verify.

This option provides the ability to enable/disable verification of the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) server TLS certificate. Disabling should only be used for testing or other scenarios where a certificate has been self-signed.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-verify-tls, repo-s3-verify-ssl, repo-s3-verify-tls

Type of storage used for the repository.

The following repository types are supported:

When an NFS mount is used as a posix repository, the same rules apply to pgBackRest as described in the PostgreSQL documentation: Creating a Database Cluster - File Systems.

PostgreSQL database.

The database name used when connecting to PostgreSQL. The default is usually best but some installations may not contain this database.

Note that for legacy reasons the setting of the PGDATABASE environment variable will be ignored.

PostgreSQL host for operating remotely.

Used for backups where the PostgreSQL host is different from the repository host.

Deprecated Name: db-host

PostgreSQL host certificate authority file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for connecting to the PostgreSQL host.

PostgreSQL host certificate authority path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for connecting to the PostgreSQL host.

PostgreSQL host certificate file.

Sent to PostgreSQL host to prove client identity.

PostgreSQL host pgBackRest command.

Required only if the path to the pgBackRest command is different on the local and PostgreSQL hosts. If not defined, the PostgreSQL host command will be set the same as the local command.

Deprecated Name: db-cmd

pgBackRest database host configuration file.

Sets the location of the configuration file on the PostgreSQL host. This is only required if the PostgreSQL host configuration file is in a different location than the local configuration file.

Deprecated Name: db-config

pgBackRest database host configuration include path.

Sets the location of the configuration include path on the PostgreSQL host. This is only required if the PostgreSQL host configuration include path is in a different location than the local configuration include path.

pgBackRest database host configuration path.

Sets the location of the configuration path on the PostgreSQL host. This is only required if the PostgreSQL host configuration path is in a different location than the local configuration path.

PostgreSQL host key file.

Proves client certificate was sent by owner.

PostgreSQL host port when pg-host is set.

Use this option to specify a non-default port for the PostgreSQL host protocol.

Deprecated Name: db-ssh-port

PostgreSQL host protocol type.

The following protocol types are supported:

PostgreSQL host logon user when pg-host is set.

This user will also own the remote pgBackRest process and will initiate connections to PostgreSQL. For this to work correctly the user should be the PostgreSQL database cluster owner which is generally postgres, the default.

Deprecated Name: db-user

PostgreSQL data directory.

This should be the same as the data_directory setting in postgresql.conf. Even though this value can be read from postgresql.conf or PostgreSQL it is prudent to set it in case those resources are not available during a restore or offline backup scenario.

The pg-path option is tested against the value reported by PostgreSQL on every online backup so it should always be current.

Deprecated Name: db-path

PostgreSQL port.

Port that PostgreSQL is running on. This usually does not need to be specified as most PostgreSQL clusters run on the default port.

Deprecated Name: db-port

PostgreSQL unix socket path.

The unix socket directory that was specified when PostgreSQL was started. pgBackRest will automatically look in the standard location for your OS so there is usually no need to specify this setting unless the socket directory was explicitly modified with the unix_socket_directory setting in postgresql.conf.

Deprecated Name: db-socket-path

PostgreSQL database user.

The database user name used when connecting to PostgreSQL. If not specified pgBackRest will connect with the local OS user or PGUSER.

Check that WAL segments are in the archive before backup completes.

Checks that all WAL segments required to make the backup consistent are present in the WAL archive. It’s a good idea to leave this as the default unless you are using another method for archiving.

This option must be enabled if archive-copy is enabled.

Check the PostgreSQL archive_mode setting.

Enabled by default, this option disallows PostgreSQL archive_mode=always.

WAL segments pushed from a standby server might be logically the same as WAL segments pushed from the primary but have different checksums. Disabling archiving from multiple sources is recommended to avoid conflicts.

Archive timeout.

Set maximum time, in seconds, to wait for each WAL segment to reach the pgBackRest archive repository. The timeout applies to the check and backup commands when waiting for WAL segments required for backup consistency to be archived.

Backup from the standby cluster.

Enable backup from standby to reduce load on the primary cluster. This option requires that both the primary and standby hosts be configured.

Buffer size for I/O operations.

Buffer size used for copy, compress, encrypt, and other operations. The number of buffers used depends on options and each operation may use additional memory, e.g. gz compression may use an additional 256KiB of memory.

Allowed values are 16KiB, 32KiB, 64KiB, 128KiB, 256KiB, 512KiB, 1MiB, 2MiB, 4MiB, 8MiB, and 16MiB.

pgBackRest command.

pgBackRest may generate a command string, e.g. when the restore command generates the restore_command setting. The command used to run the pgBackRest process will be used in this case unless the cmd option is provided.

SSH client command.

Use a specific SSH client command when an alternate is desired or the ssh command is not in $PATH.

Network compression level.

Sets the network compression level when compress-type=none and the command is not run on the same host as the repository. Compression is used to reduce network traffic but can be disabled by setting compress-level-network=0. When compress-type does not equal none the compress-level-network setting is ignored and compress-level is used instead so that the file is only compressed once.

pgBackRest configuration file.

Use this option to specify a different configuration file than the default.

Path to additional pgBackRest configuration files.

Configuration files existing in the specified location with extension .conf will be concatenated with the pgBackRest configuration file, resulting in one configuration file.

Base path of pgBackRest configuration files.

This setting is used to override the default base path setting for the --config and --config-include-path options unless they are explicitly set on the command-line.

For example, passing only --config-path=/conf/pgbackrest results in the --config default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/pgbackrest.conf and the --config-include-path default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/conf.d.

Database query timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, for queries against the database. This includes the backup start/stop functions which can each take a substantial amount of time. Because of this the timeout should be kept high unless you know that these functions will return quickly (i.e. if you have set start-fast=y and you know that the database cluster will not generate many WAL segments during the backup).

I/O timeout.

Timeout, in seconds, used for connections and read/write operations.

Note that the entire read/write operation does not need to complete within this timeout but some progress must be made, even if it is only a single byte.

Use a neutral umask.

Sets the umask to 0000 so modes in the repository are created in a sensible way. The default directory mode is 0750 and default file mode is 0640. The lock and log directories set the directory and file mode to 0770 and 0660 respectively.

To use the executing user’s umask instead specify neutral-umask=n in the config file or --no-neutral-umask on the command line.

Protocol timeout.

Sets the timeout, in seconds, that the local or remote process will wait for a new message to be received on the protocol layer. This prevents processes from waiting indefinitely for a message.

Keep-alive enable.

Enables keep-alive messages on socket connections.

Defines the stanza.

A stanza is the configuration for a PostgreSQL database cluster that defines where it is located, how it will be backed up, archiving options, etc. Most db servers will only have one PostgreSQL database cluster and therefore one stanza, whereas backup servers will have a stanza for every database cluster that needs to be backed up.

It is tempting to name the stanza after the primary cluster but a better name describes the databases contained in the cluster. Because the stanza name will be used for the primary and all replicas it is more appropriate to choose a name that describes the actual function of the cluster, such as app or dw, rather than the local cluster name, such as main or prod.

Keep-alive count.

Specifies the number of TCP keep-alive messages that can be lost before the connection is considered dead.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPCNT socket option.

Keep-alive idle time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) with no network activity after which the operating system should send a TCP keep-alive message.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPIDLE socket option.

Keep-alive interval time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) after which a TCP keep-alive message that has not been acknowledged should be retransmitted.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPINTVL socket option.

Level for console logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for file logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for stderr logging.

Specifies which log levels will output to stderr rather than stdout (specified by log-level-console). The timestamp and process will not be output to stderr.

The following log levels are supported:

Path where log files are stored.

The log path provides a location for pgBackRest to store log files. Note that if log-level-file=off then no log path is required.

Enable logging in subprocesses.

Enable file logging for any subprocesses created by this process using the log level specified by log-level-file.

Enable timestamp in logging.

Enables the timestamp in console and file logging. This option is disabled in special situations such as generating documentation.

Azure repository container.

Azure container used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the container root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other Azure-generated content can also be stored in the container.

Azure repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

Azure URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

Cipher used to encrypt the repository.

The following cipher types are supported:

Note that encryption is always performed client-side even if the repository type (e.g. S3) supports encryption.

GCS repository bucket.

GCS bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other GCS-generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

GCS repository endpoint.

Endpoint used to connect to the storage service. May be updated to use a local GCS server or alternate endpoint.

GCS repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

When repo-gcs-key-type=service the credentials will be reloaded when the authentication token is renewed.

Repository host when operating remotely.

When backing up and archiving to a locally mounted filesystem this setting is not required.

Deprecated Name: backup-host

Repository host certificate authority file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for connecting to the repository host.

Repository host certificate authority path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for connecting to the repository host.

Repository host certificate file.

Sent to repository host to prove client identity.

Repository host pgBackRest command.

Required only if the path to the pgBackRest command is different on the local and repository hosts. If not defined, the repository host command will be set the same as the local command.

Deprecated Name: backup-cmd

pgBackRest repository host configuration file.

Sets the location of the configuration file on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration file is in a different location than the local configuration file.

Deprecated Name: backup-config

pgBackRest repository host configuration include path.

Sets the location of the configuration include path on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration include path is in a different location than the local configuration include path.

pgBackRest repository host configuration path.

Sets the location of the configuration path on the repository host. This is only required if the repository host configuration path is in a different location than the local configuration path.

Repository host key file.

Proves client certificate was sent by owner.

Repository host port when repo-host is set.

Use this option to specify a non-default port for the repository host protocol.

Deprecated Name: backup-ssh-port

Repository host protocol type.

The following protocol types are supported:

Repository host user when repo-host is set.

Defines the user that will be used for operations on the repository host. Preferably this is not the postgres user but rather some other user like pgbackrest. If PostgreSQL runs on the repository host the postgres user can be placed in the pgbackrest group so it has read permissions on the repository without being able to damage the contents accidentally.

Deprecated Name: backup-user

Path where backups and archive are stored.

The repository is where pgBackRest stores backups and archives WAL segments.

It may be difficult to estimate in advance how much space you’ll need. The best thing to do is take some backups then record the size of different types of backups (full/incr/diff) and measure the amount of WAL generated per day. This will give you a general idea of how much space you’ll need, though of course requirements will likely change over time as your database evolves.

S3 repository bucket.

S3 bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other AWS generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

S3 repository endpoint.

The AWS endpoint should be valid for the selected region.

For custom/test configurations the repo-storage-ca-file, repo-storage-ca-path, repo-storage-host, repo-storage-port, and repo-storage-verify-tls options may be useful.

S3 repository key type.

The following types are supported:

S3 repository KMS key.

Setting this option enables S3 server-side encryption using the specified AWS key management service key.

S3 repository region.

The AWS region where the bucket was created.

S3 repository role.

The AWS role name (not the full ARN) used to retrieve temporary credentials when repo-s3-key-type=auto.

S3 URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

SFTP repository host.

The SFTP host containing the repository.

SFTP repository host fingerprint.

SFTP repository host fingerprint generation should match the repo-sftp-host-key-hash-type. Generate the fingerprint via awk '\{print $2}' ssh_host_xxx_key.pub | base64 -d | (md5sum or sha1sum) -b. The ssh host keys are normally found in the /etc/ssh directory.

SFTP host key check type.

The following SFTP host key check types are supported:

SFTP repository host key hash type.

SFTP repository host key hash type. Declares the hash type to be used to compute the digest of the remote system’s host key on SSH startup. Newer versions of libssh2 support sha256 in addition to md5 and sha1.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host port.

SFTP repository host user.

User on the host used to store the repository.

SFTP known hosts file.

A known hosts file to search for an SFTP host match during authentication. When unspecified, pgBackRest will default to searching ~/.ssh/known_hosts, ~/.ssh/known_hosts2, /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts, and /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts2. If configured with one or more file paths, pgBackRest will search those for a match. File paths must be full or leading tilde paths. The repo-sftp-known-host option can be passed multiple times to specify more than one known hosts file to search. To utilize known hosts file checking repo-sftp-host-fingerprint must not be specified. See also repo-sftp-host-check-type option.

SFTP private key file.

SFTP private key file used for authentication.

SFTP public key file.

SFTP public key file used for authentication. Optional if compiled against OpenSSL, required if compiled against a different library.

Repository storage CA file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-file, repo-s3-ca-file

Repository storage CA path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for storage (e.g. S3, Azure) certificates.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-ca-path, repo-s3-ca-path

Repository storage host.

Connect to a host other than the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint. This is typically used for testing.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-host, repo-s3-host

Repository storage port.

Port to use when connecting to the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) endpoint (or host if specified).

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-port, repo-s3-port

Repository storage tag(s).

Specify tags that will be added to objects when the repository is an object store (e.g. S3). The option can be repeated to add multiple tags.

There is no provision in pgBackRest to modify these tags so be sure to set them correctly before running stanza-create to ensure uniform tags across the entire repository.

Repository storage upload chunk size.

Object stores such as S3 allow files to be uploaded in chunks when the file is too large to be stored in memory. Even if the file can be stored in memory, it is more memory efficient to limit the amount of memory used for uploads.

A larger chunk size will generally lead to better performance because it will minimize upload requests and allow more files to be uploaded in a single request rather than in chunks. The disadvantage is that memory usage will be higher and because the chunk buffer must be allocated per process, larger process-max values will lead to more memory being consumed overall.

Default chunk sizes by repo type:

Note that valid chunk sizes vary by storage type and by platform. For example, AWS S3 has a minimum chunk size of 5MiB but S3 clones may accept lower values. Terminology for chunk size varies by storage type, so when searching min/max values use “part size” for AWS S3, “chunk size” for GCS, and “block size” for Azure. No attempt is made to validate configured chunk sizes so selecting an invalid value will lead to errors from the storage service or undefined behavior.

Repository storage certificate verify.

This option provides the ability to enable/disable verification of the storage (e.g. S3, Azure) server TLS certificate. Disabling should only be used for testing or other scenarios where a certificate has been self-signed.

Deprecated Names: repo-azure-verify-tls, repo-s3-verify-ssl, repo-s3-verify-tls

Type of storage used for the repository.

The following repository types are supported:

When an NFS mount is used as a posix repository, the same rules apply to pgBackRest as described in the PostgreSQL documentation: Creating a Database Cluster - File Systems.

PostgreSQL database.

The database name used when connecting to PostgreSQL. The default is usually best but some installations may not contain this database.

Note that for legacy reasons the setting of the PGDATABASE environment variable will be ignored.

PostgreSQL host for operating remotely.

Used for backups where the PostgreSQL host is different from the repository host.

Deprecated Name: db-host

PostgreSQL host certificate authority file.

Use a CA file other than the system default for connecting to the PostgreSQL host.

PostgreSQL host certificate authority path.

Use a CA path other than the system default for connecting to the PostgreSQL host.

PostgreSQL host certificate file.

Sent to PostgreSQL host to prove client identity.

PostgreSQL host pgBackRest command.

Required only if the path to the pgBackRest command is different on the local and PostgreSQL hosts. If not defined, the PostgreSQL host command will be set the same as the local command.

Deprecated Name: db-cmd

pgBackRest database host configuration file.

Sets the location of the configuration file on the PostgreSQL host. This is only required if the PostgreSQL host configuration file is in a different location than the local configuration file.

Deprecated Name: db-config

pgBackRest database host configuration include path.

Sets the location of the configuration include path on the PostgreSQL host. This is only required if the PostgreSQL host configuration include path is in a different location than the local configuration include path.

pgBackRest database host configuration path.

Sets the location of the configuration path on the PostgreSQL host. This is only required if the PostgreSQL host configuration path is in a different location than the local configuration path.

PostgreSQL host key file.

Proves client certificate was sent by owner.

PostgreSQL host port when pg-host is set.

Use this option to specify a non-default port for the PostgreSQL host protocol.

Deprecated Name: db-ssh-port

PostgreSQL host protocol type.

The following protocol types are supported:

PostgreSQL host logon user when pg-host is set.

This user will also own the remote pgBackRest process and will initiate connections to PostgreSQL. For this to work correctly the user should be the PostgreSQL database cluster owner which is generally postgres, the default.

Deprecated Name: db-user

PostgreSQL data directory.

This should be the same as the data_directory setting in postgresql.conf. Even though this value can be read from postgresql.conf or PostgreSQL it is prudent to set it in case those resources are not available during a restore or offline backup scenario.

The pg-path option is tested against the value reported by PostgreSQL on every online backup so it should always be current.

Deprecated Name: db-path

PostgreSQL port.

Port that PostgreSQL is running on. This usually does not need to be specified as most PostgreSQL clusters run on the default port.

Deprecated Name: db-port

PostgreSQL unix socket path.

The unix socket directory that was specified when PostgreSQL was started. pgBackRest will automatically look in the standard location for your OS so there is usually no need to specify this setting unless the socket directory was explicitly modified with the unix_socket_directory setting in postgresql.conf.

Deprecated Name: db-socket-path

PostgreSQL database user.

The database user name used when connecting to PostgreSQL. If not specified pgBackRest will connect with the local OS user or PGUSER.

Backup set to expire.

The specified backup set (i.e. the backup label provided and all of its dependent backups, if any) will be expired regardless of backup retention rules except that at least one full backup must remain in the repository.

Buffer size for I/O operations.

Buffer size used for copy, compress, encrypt, and other operations. The number of buffers used depends on options and each operation may use additional memory, e.g. gz compression may use an additional 256KiB of memory.

Allowed values are 16KiB, 32KiB, 64KiB, 128KiB, 256KiB, 512KiB, 1MiB, 2MiB, 4MiB, 8MiB, and 16MiB.

pgBackRest configuration file.

Use this option to specify a different configuration file than the default.

Path to additional pgBackRest configuration files.

Configuration files existing in the specified location with extension .conf will be concatenated with the pgBackRest configuration file, resulting in one configuration file.

Base path of pgBackRest configuration files.

This setting is used to override the default base path setting for the --config and --config-include-path options unless they are explicitly set on the command-line.

For example, passing only --config-path=/conf/pgbackrest results in the --config default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/pgbackrest.conf and the --config-include-path default being set to /conf/pgbackrest/conf.d.

Execute a dry-run for the command.

The --dry-run option is a command-line only option and can be passed when it is desirable to determine what modifications will be made by the command without the command actually making any modifications.

I/O timeout.

Timeout, in seconds, used for connections and read/write operations.

Note that the entire read/write operation does not need to complete within this timeout but some progress must be made, even if it is only a single byte.

Path where lock files are stored.

The lock path provides a location for pgBackRest to create lock files to prevent conflicting operations from being run concurrently.

Use a neutral umask.

Sets the umask to 0000 so modes in the repository are created in a sensible way. The default directory mode is 0750 and default file mode is 0640. The lock and log directories set the directory and file mode to 0770 and 0660 respectively.

To use the executing user’s umask instead specify neutral-umask=n in the config file or --no-neutral-umask on the command line.

Keep-alive enable.

Enables keep-alive messages on socket connections.

Defines the stanza.

A stanza is the configuration for a PostgreSQL database cluster that defines where it is located, how it will be backed up, archiving options, etc. Most db servers will only have one PostgreSQL database cluster and therefore one stanza, whereas backup servers will have a stanza for every database cluster that needs to be backed up.

It is tempting to name the stanza after the primary cluster but a better name describes the databases contained in the cluster. Because the stanza name will be used for the primary and all replicas it is more appropriate to choose a name that describes the actual function of the cluster, such as app or dw, rather than the local cluster name, such as main or prod.

Keep-alive count.

Specifies the number of TCP keep-alive messages that can be lost before the connection is considered dead.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPCNT socket option.

Keep-alive idle time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) with no network activity after which the operating system should send a TCP keep-alive message.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPIDLE socket option.

Keep-alive interval time.

Specifies the amount of time (in seconds) after which a TCP keep-alive message that has not been acknowledged should be retransmitted.

This option is available on systems that support the TCP_KEEPINTVL socket option.

Level for console logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for file logging.

The following log levels are supported:

Level for stderr logging.

Specifies which log levels will output to stderr rather than stdout (specified by log-level-console). The timestamp and process will not be output to stderr.

The following log levels are supported:

Path where log files are stored.

The log path provides a location for pgBackRest to store log files. Note that if log-level-file=off then no log path is required.

Enable timestamp in logging.

Enables the timestamp in console and file logging. This option is disabled in special situations such as generating documentation.

Set repository.

Set the repository for a command to operate on.

For example, this option may be used to perform a restore from a specific repository, rather than letting pgBackRest choose.

Azure repository container.

Azure container used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the container root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other Azure-generated content can also be stored in the container.

Azure repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

Azure URI Style.

The following URI styles are supported:

Cipher used to encrypt the repository.

The following cipher types are supported:

Note that encryption is always performed client-side even if the repository type (e.g. S3) supports encryption.

GCS repository bucket.

GCS bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other GCS-generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

GCS repository endpoint.

Endpoint used to connect to the storage service. May be updated to use a local GCS server or alternate endpoint.

GCS repository key type.

The following types are supported for authorization:

When repo-gcs-key-type=service the credentials will be reloaded when the authentication token is renewed.

Path where backups and archive are stored.

The repository is where pgBackRest stores backups and archives WAL segments.

It may be difficult to estimate in advance how much space you’ll need. The best thing to do is take some backups then record the size of different types of backups (full/incr/diff) and measure the amount of WAL generated per day. This will give you a general idea of how much space you’ll need, though of course requirements will likely change over time as your database evolves.

Number of backups worth of continuous WAL to retain.

If this value is not set and repo-retention-full-type is count (default), then the archive to expire will default to the repo-retention-full (or repo-retention-diff) value corresponding to the repo-retention-archive-type if set to full (or diff). This will ensure that WAL is only expired for backups that are already expired. If repo-retention-full-type is time, then this value will default to removing archives that are earlier than the oldest full backup retained after satisfying the repo-retention-full setting.

This option must be set if repo-retention-archive-type is set to incr. If disk space is at a premium, then this setting, in conjunction with repo-retention-archive-type, can be used to aggressively expire WAL segments. However, doing so negates the ability to perform PITR from the backups with expired WAL and is therefore not recommended.

Deprecated Name: retention-archive

Backup type for WAL retention.

If set to full pgBackRest will keep archive logs for the number of full backups defined by repo-retention-archive. If set to diff (differential) pgBackRest will keep archive logs for the number of full and differential backups defined by repo-retention-archive, meaning if the last backup taken was a full backup, it will be counted as a differential for the purpose of repo-retention. If set to incr (incremental) pgBackRest will keep archive logs for the number of full, differential, and incremental backups defined by repo-retention-archive. It is recommended that this setting not be changed from the default which will only expire WAL in conjunction with expiring full backups.

Deprecated Name: retention-archive-type

Number of differential backups to retain.

When a differential backup expires, all incremental backups associated with the differential backup will also expire. When not defined all differential backups will be kept until the full backups they depend on expire.

Deprecated Name: retention-diff

Full backup retention count/time.

When a full backup expires, all differential and incremental backups associated with the full backup will also expire. When the option is not defined a warning will be issued. If indefinite retention is desired then set the option to the max value.

Deprecated Name: retention-full

Retention type for full backups.

Determines whether the repo-retention-full setting represents a time period (days) or count of full backups to keep. If set to time then full backups older than repo-retention-full will be removed from the repository if there is at least one backup that is equal to or greater than the repo-retention-full setting. For example, if repo-retention-full is 30 (days) and there are 2 full backups: one 25 days old and one 35 days old, no full backups will be expired because expiring the 35 day old backup would leave only the 25 day old backup, which would violate the 30 day retention policy of having at least one backup 30 days old before an older one can be expired. Archived WAL older than the oldest full backup remaining will be automatically expired unless repo-retention-archive-type and repo-retention-archive are explicitly set.

Days of backup history manifests to retain.

A copy of the backup manifest is stored in the backup.history path when a backup completes. By default these files are never expired since they are useful for data mining, e.g. measuring backup and WAL growth over time.

Set repo-retention-history to define the number of days of backup history manifests to retain. Unexpired backups are always kept in the backup history. Specify repo-retention-history=0 to retain the backup history only for unexpired backups.

When a full backup history manifest is expired, all differential and incremental backup history manifests associated with the full backup also expire.

S3 repository bucket.

S3 bucket used to store the repository.

pgBackRest repositories can be stored in the bucket root by setting repo-path=/ but it is usually best to specify a prefix, such as /repo, so logs and other AWS generated content can also be stored in the bucket.

S3 repository endpoint.

The AWS endpoint should be valid for the selected region.

For custom/test configurations the repo-storage-ca-file, repo-storage-ca-path, repo-storage-host, repo-storage-port, and repo-storage-verify-tls options may be useful.

S3 repository key type.

The following types are supported: