BARMAN(1) Barman User manuals | Version 2.1

NAME

barman - Backup and Recovery Manager for PostgreSQL

SYNOPSIS

barman [OPTIONS] COMMAND

DESCRIPTION

Barman is an administration tool for disaster recovery of PostgreSQL servers written in Python and maintained by 2ndQuadrant. Barman can perform remote backups of multiple servers in business critical environments and helps DBAs during the recovery phase.

OPTIONS

-v, –version
Show program version number and exit.
-q, –quiet
Do not output anything. Useful for cron scripts.
-h, –help
Show a help message and exit.
-c CONFIG, –config CONFIG
Use the specified configuration file.

COMMANDS

Important: every command has a help option

archive-wal SERVER_NAME
Get any incoming xlog file (both through standard archive_command and streaming replication, where applicable) and moves them in the WAL archive for that server. If necessary, apply compression when requested by the user.
cron
Perform maintenance tasks, such as enforcing retention policies or WAL files management.
list-server
Show all the configured servers, and their descriptions.
show-server SERVER_NAME
Show information about SERVER_NAME, including: conninfo, backup_directory, wals_directory and many more. Specify all as SERVER_NAME to show information about all the configured servers.
status SERVER_NAME
Show information about the status of a server, including: number of available backups, archive_command, archive_status and many more. For example: 
Server quagmire:
  Description: The Giggity database
  Passive node: False
  PostgreSQL version: 9.3.9
  pgespresso extension: Not available
  PostgreSQL Data directory: /srv/postgresql/9.3/data
  PostgreSQL 'archive_command' setting: rsync -a %p barman@backup:/var/lib/barman/quagmire/incoming
  Last archived WAL: 0000000100003103000000AD
  Current WAL segment: 0000000100003103000000AE
  Retention policies: enforced (mode: auto, retention: REDUNDANCY 2, WAL retention: MAIN)
  No. of available backups: 2
  First available backup: 20150908T003001
  Last available backup: 20150909T003001
  Minimum redundancy requirements: satisfied (2/1)
check SERVER_NAME

Show diagnostic information about SERVER_NAME, including: Ssh connection check, PostgreSQL version, configuration and backup directories, archiving process, streaming process, replication slots, etc. Specify all as SERVER_NAME to show diagnostic information about all the configured servers.

–nagios
Nagios plugin compatible output
diagnose
Collect diagnostic information about the server where barman is installed and all the configured servers, including: global configuration, SSH version, Python version, rsync version, as well as current configuration and status of all servers.
backup SERVER_NAME

Perform a backup of SERVER_NAME using parameters specified in the configuration file. Specify all as SERVER_NAME to perform a backup of all the configured servers.

–immediate-checkpoint
forces the initial checkpoint to be done as quickly as possible. Overrides value of the parameter immediate_checkpoint, if present in the configuration file.
–no-immediate-checkpoint
forces to wait for the checkpoint. Overrides value of the parameter immediate_checkpoint, if present in the configuration file.
–reuse-backup [INCREMENTAL_TYPE]

Overrides reuse_backup option behaviour. Possible values for INCREMENTAL_TYPE are:

  • off: do not reuse the last available backup;
  • copy: reuse the last available backup for a server and create a copy of the unchanged files (reduce backup time);
  • link: reuse the last available backup for a server and create a hard link of the unchanged files (reduce backup time and space);

link is the default target if --reuse-backup is used and INCREMENTAL_TYPE is not explicited.

–retry-times
Number of retries of base backup copy, after an error. Used during both backup and recovery operations. Overrides value of the parameter basebackup_retry_times, if present in the configuration file.
–no-retry
Same as --retry-times 0
–retry-sleep
Number of seconds of wait after a failed copy, before retrying. Used during both backup and recovery operations. Overrides value of the parameter basebackup_retry_sleep, if present in the configuration file.
list-backup SERVER_NAME
Show available backups for SERVER_NAME. This command is useful to retrieve a backup ID. For example: 
servername 20111104T102647 - Fri Nov  4 10:26:48 2011 - Size: 17.0 MiB - WAL Size: 100 B
In this case, *20111104T102647* is the backup ID.
show-backup SERVER_NAME BACKUP_ID
Show detailed information about a particular backup, identified by the server name and the backup ID. See the Backup ID shortcuts section below for available shortcuts. For example: 
Backup 20150828T130001:
  Server Name            : quagmire
  Status                 : DONE
  PostgreSQL Version     : 90402
  PGDATA directory       : /srv/postgresql/9.4/main/data

  Base backup information:
    Disk usage           : 12.4 TiB (12.4 TiB with WALs)
    Incremental size     : 4.9 TiB (-60.02%)
    Timeline             : 1
    Begin WAL            : 0000000100000CFD000000AD
    End WAL              : 0000000100000D0D00000008
    WAL number           : 3932
    WAL compression ratio: 79.51%
    Begin time           : 2015-08-28 13:00:01.633925+00:00
    End time             : 2015-08-29 10:27:06.522846+00:00
    Begin Offset         : 1575048
    End Offset           : 13853016
    Begin XLOG           : CFD/AD180888
    End XLOG             : D0D/8D36158

  WAL information:
    No of files          : 35039
    Disk usage           : 121.5 GiB
    WAL rate             : 275.50/hour
    Compression ratio    : 77.81%
    Last available       : 0000000100000D95000000E7

  Catalog information:
    Retention Policy     : not enforced
    Previous Backup      : 20150821T130001
    Next Backup          : - (this is the latest base backup)
list-files [OPTIONS] SERVER_NAME BACKUP_ID

List all the files in a particular backup, identified by the server name and the backup ID. See the Backup ID shortcuts section below for available shortcuts.

–target TARGET_TYPE

Possible values for TARGET_TYPE are:

  • data: lists just the data files;
  • standalone: lists the base backup files, including required WAL files;
  • wal: lists all the WAL files between the start of the base backup and the end of the log / the start of the following base backup (depending on whether the specified base backup is the most recent one available);
  • full: same as data + wal.

The default value is standalone.

rebuild-xlogdb SERVER_NAME
Perform a rebuild of the WAL file metadata for SERVER_NAME (or every server, using the all shortcut) guessing it from the disk content. The metadata of the WAL archive is contained in the xlog.db file, and every Barman server has its own copy.
recover [OPTIONS] SERVER_NAME BACKUP_ID DESTINATION_DIRECTORY

Recover a backup in a given directory (local or remote, depending on the --remote-ssh-command option settings). See the Backup ID shortcuts section below for available shortcuts.

–target-tli TARGET_TLI
Recover the specified timeline.
–target-time TARGET_TIME

Recover to the specified time.

You can use any valid unambiguous representation (e.g: “YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.mmm”).

–target-xid TARGET_XID
Recover to the specified transaction ID.
–target-name TARGET_NAME
Recover to the named restore point previously created with the pg_create_restore_point(name) (for PostgreSQL 9.1 and above users).
–exclusive
Set target xid to be non inclusive.
–tablespace NAME:LOCATION
Specify tablespace relocation rule.
–remote-ssh-command SSH_COMMAND
This options activates remote recovery, by specifying the secure shell command to be launched on a remote host. This is the equivalent of the “ssh_command” server option in the configuration file for remote recovery. Example: ‘ssh postgres@db2’.
–retry-times RETRY_TIMES
Number of retries of data copy during base backup after an error. Overrides value of the parameter basebackup_retry_times, if present in the configuration file.
–no-retry
Same as --retry-times 0
–retry-sleep
Number of seconds of wait after a failed copy, before retrying. Overrides value of the parameter basebackup_retry_sleep, if present in the configuration file.
get-wal [OPTIONS] SERVER_NAME WAL_ID

Retrieve a WAL file from the xlog archive of a given server. By default, the requested WAL file, if found, is returned as uncompressed content to STDOUT. The following options allow users to change this behaviour:

-o OUTPUT_DIRECTORY
destination directory where the get-wal will deposit the requested WAL
-z
output will be compressed using gzip
-j
output will be compressed using bzip2
-p SIZE
peek from the WAL archive up to SIZE WAL files, starting from the requested one. ‘SIZE’ must be an integer >= 1. When invoked with this option, get-wal returns a list of zero to ‘SIZE’ WAL segment names, one per row.
switch-xlog SERVER_NAME

Execute pg_switch_xlog() on the target server

–force
Forces the switch by executing CHECKPOINT before pg_switch_xlog(). IMPORTANT: executing a CHECKPOINT might increase I/O load on a PostgreSQL server. Use this option with care.
–archive
Wait for one xlog file to be archived. If after a defined amount of time (default: 30 seconds) no xlog file is archived, Barman will teminate with failure exit code.
–archive-timeout TIMEOUT
Specifies the amount of time in seconds (default: 30 seconds) the archiver will wait for a new xlog file to be archived before timing out.
receive-wal SERVER_NAME

Start the stream of transaction logs for a server. The process relies on pg_receivexlog to receive WAL files from the PostgreSQL servers through the streaming protocol.

–stop
stop the receive-wal process for the server
–reset
reset the status of receive-wal, restarting the streaming from the current WAL file of the server
–create-slot
create the physical replication slot configured with the slot_name configuration parameter
–drop-slot
drop the physical replication slot configured with the slot_name configuration parameter
delete SERVER_NAME BACKUP_ID
Delete the specified backup. Backup ID shortcuts section below for available shortcuts.
replication-status [OPTIONS] SERVER_NAME

Shows live information and status of any streaming client attached to the given server (or servers). Default behaviour can be changed through the following options:

–minimal
machine readable output (default: False)
–target TARGET_TYPE

Possible values for TARGET_TYPE are:

  • hot-standby: lists only hot standby servers
  • wal-streamer: lists only WAL streaming clients, such as pg_receivexlog
  • all: any streaming client (default)

BACKUP ID SHORTCUTS

Rather than using the timestamp backup ID, you can use any of the following shortcuts/aliases to identity a backup for a given server:

first
Oldest available backup for that server, in chronological order.
last
Latest available backup for that server, in chronological order.
latest
same ast last.
oldest
same ast first.

EXIT STATUS

0
Success
Not zero
Failure

SEE ALSO

barman (5).

BUGS

Barman has been extensively tested, and is currently being used in several production environments. However, we cannot exclude the presence of bugs.

Any bug can be reported via the Sourceforge bug tracker. Along the bug submission, users can provide developers with diagnostics information obtained through the barman diagnose command.

AUTHORS

In alphabetical order:

  • Gabriele Bartolini (project leader)
  • Jonathan Battiato (QA/testing)
  • Stefano Bianucci (developer, intern from University of Florence)
  • Giuseppe Broccolo (QA/testing)
  • Giulio Calacoci (developer)
  • Francesco Canovai (QA/testing)
  • Leonardo Cecchi (developer)
  • Gianni Ciolli (QA/testing)
  • Britt Cole (documentation)
  • Marco Nenciarini (lead developer)
  • Rubens Souza (QA/testing)

Past contributors:

  • Carlo Ascani

RESOURCES

COPYING

Barman is the property of 2ndQuadrant Italia and its code is distributed under GNU General Public License v3.

Copyright (C) 2011-2016 2ndQuadrant Italia Srl - http://www.2ndQuadrant.it/.