Recommended Settings

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This section walks you through the recommended settings while using pgBackRest.

Encryption

Use the following settings to encrypt the files in the repository repo1:

repo1-cipher-pass=FIXME
repo1-cipher-type=aes-256-cbc

The cipher-pass should be base64 encoded. For example, to generate a random passphrase use the following setting:

$ openssl rand -base64 48

Maximum Number of Processes

Use the following setting to set the maximum number of processes for compression usage and file transfer:

process-max=FIXME

Each process will perform compression and transfer to make the command run faster, but do not set process-max so high that it impacts server load and performance.

Backup Fast Start

Use the start-fast=y setting to force a checkpoint to start the backup quickly. This is achieved inside pgBackRest by passing true to the fast parameter of the pg_start_backup() database function. The backup will then begin immediately rather than waiting for the next regular checkpoint triggered by the database server itself.

Delta

Use the delta=y setting to restore or backup using checksums.

During a restore, the data and tablespaces 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 timestamps to determine if files will be copied.

Log Levels

The output of each command will be printed in the console and a log file.

Use the following log-level-console and log-level-file settings to apply the log level:

  • off;
  • error;
  • warn;
  • info;
  • detail;
  • debug;
  • trace.

CAUTION: Trace-level logging may expose secrets such as keys and passwords.

To add more output in the log file in case the executed command encounters an error and to avoid re-executing the command for more information, use the following settings:

log-level-console=info
log-level-file=debug

EDB Postgres Advanced Server 15 compatibility

PostgreSQL forks may update the pg_control version or WAL headers without affecting the structures that pgBackRest depends on. The pg-version-force option has been added in v2.45 to force pgBackRest to treat a cluster as the specified version when it cannot be automatically identified.

When using EDB Postgres Advanced Server 15 or above, you might see this kind of error:

WARN: unable to check pg1: [VersionNotSupportedError] unexpected control version = 1501 and catalog version = 202209061
      HINT: is this version of PostgreSQL supported?

To solve this problem, add pg-version-force=15 into your configuration, in the stanza section (where 15 is the major release version used).

Glossary

pgBackRest

delta log-level-console log-level-file process-max repo-cipher-pass repo-cipher-type

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