Upgrade to 3.3

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 3.2

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 3.1

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 3.0

• Rename *xlog to *wal in helper scripts and configuration keys:
  • move file archive_xlog to archive_wal
  • move file restore_xlog to restore_wal
  • rename configuration key PGXLOG to PGWAL
  • Note that ARCHIVE_DIR default configuration changed: “$BACKUP_DIR/archived_xlog” -> “$BACKUP_DIR/archived_wal”
• New configuration key for PostgreSQL 12: RESTORE_MODE, set by default to “recovery”. Can be set to “recovery” or “standby”.

Upgrade to 2.5

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 2.4

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 2.3

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 2.2

• Modify calls of pitrery -c to pitrery -f where needed.

Upgrade to 2.1

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 2.0

• Command line switches and options to specify if the backup is local, the user, host and target directory, are now merged into a SSH style syntax: [[user@]host:]/path. Not providing a host tells pitrery the backups are local.

• Remove the BACKUP_LABEL option, subdirectory and -l switch. They were not used a lot. Please change the backup directory to include the label.

• Remove BACKUP_IS_LOCAL and ARCHIVE_LOCAL options. Backup or WAL archiving are local when BACKUP_HOST or ARCHIVE_HOST are empty.

• Rename the default configuration file from pitr.conf to pitrery.conf

Upgrade to 1.13

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 1.12

Ensure the new name of archiving compression parameters are used, older names are no longer supported. See 1.9 upgrade instructions.

Upgrade to 1.11

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 1.10

Nothing to do.

Upgrade to 1.9

WAL files archiving and restoring

The following configuration parameters have been renamed :

• COMPRESS_BIN -> ARCHIVE_COMPRESS_BIN
• COMPRESS_SUFFIX -> ARCHIVE_COMPRESS_SUFFIX
• UNCOMPRESS_BIN -> ARCHIVE_UNCOMPRESS_BIN

The safest way to update the configuration file on a running system is to :

• Add the renamed parameters in the configuration file without touching the old ones
• Perform the upgrade
• Remove the old parameters from the configuration file

Restore

When they differ from the configuration file, options to restore_xlog must be passed using a full custom restore command, with the -r option.

Upgrade to 1.8

Backup

When using the “rsync” storage method, the directory tree of the previous backup is duplicated using hardlinks for files, before rsync’ing over the new tree. The duplication can be done using cp -rl or pax -rwl. This make pitrery more portable on non-GNU systems. The tool can be chosen at build time, GNU cp staying the default.

When using this method over SSH, pax may be required on the target host.

Upgrade to 1.7

Usage

• Calling pitrery by using pitr_mgr is no longer possible. The symlink has been removed after keeping backward compatibility for two versions.

• The post backup hook script, configurable using POST_BACKUP_COMMAND, is now run after the pre backup hook, even if the backup fails. The new PITRERY_EXIT_CODE environment variable is set to the exit code of the backup.

Configuration

The following new configuration variables may be used, here are their defaults:

• BACKUP_COMPRESS_BIN (gzip -4). BACKUP_UNCOMPRESS_BIN (gunzip). Commands to use when compressing and uncompressing backed up files with tar.

• BACKUP_COMPRESS_SUFFIX (gz). Suffix of the files produces by the previous commands.

Upgrade to 1.6

RPM Package

• Configuration files have been moved from /etc/sysconfig/pgsql to /etc/pitrery

Upgrade to 1.5

Configuration

The following new configuration variables may be used, here are their defaults:

• PGXLOG (empty). Path to put pg_xlog outside of PGDATA when restoring.
• PRE_BACKUP_COMMAND (empty) and POST_BACKUP_COMMAND. Command to run before and after the base backup.
• STORAGE (tar). Storage method, “tar” or “rsync”.
• COMPRESS_BIN, COMPRESS_SUFFIX and UNCOMPRESS_BIN. Controls to tool used to compress archived WAL files.

Archiving

Compression options are only available in the configuration file, customising this forces to use -C option of archive_xlog.

Upgrade to 1.4

Archiving

As of 1.4, the archive_xlog.conf files is no longer used to configure archive_xlog. All parameter are now in pitr.conf.

To upgrade, you need to merge your configuration into a pitr.conf file. The default one is available in DOCDIR (/usr/local/share/doc/pitrery by default), comments should be enough to help you reconfigure archive_xlog.

The archive_command should be updated to have archive_xlog search for the configuration file, -C option accept the basename of the configuration file name and searches in the configuration directory, a full path is also accepted:

archive_command = 'archive_xlog -C mypitr %p'

Upgrade to 1.3

Archiving

As of 1.3, pitrery no longer archive more than one file. Thus archive_nodes.conf file has been removed. The archive_xlog script now archives only one file.

If you are archiving more than one time, you have to chain archiving in the archive_command parameter of postgresql.conf:

archive_command = 'archive_xlog -C archive_xlog %p && rsync -az %p standby:/path/to/archives/%f'

Of course you can chain archive_xlog to archive multiple times.

Backup and restore

As of 1.3, the best backup is found by storing the stop time of the backup as an offset from the Unix Epoch in the backup_timestamp file inside each backup directory. The files can be created from the backup_label files using this shell script:

BACKUP_DIR=/path/to/backup/dir
LABEL=pitr

for x in ${BACKUP_DIR}/${LABEL}/[0-9]*/backup_label; do
    psql -At -c "select extract(epoch from timestamp with time zone '`awk '/^STOP TIME:/ { print $3" "$4" "$5 }' $x`');" > `dirname $x`/backup_timestamp
done