pg_basebackup — take a base backup of a PostgreSQL cluster
pg_basebackup
[option
...]
pg_basebackup is used to take a base backup of a running PostgreSQL database cluster. The backup is taken without affecting other clients of the database, and can be used both for point-in-time recovery (see Section 26.3) and as the starting point for a log-shipping or streaming-replication standby server (see Section 27.2).
pg_basebackup makes an exact copy of the database cluster's files, while making sure the server is put into and out of backup mode automatically. Backups are always taken of the entire database cluster; it is not possible to back up individual databases or database objects. For selective backups, another tool such as pg_dump must be used.
The backup is made over a regular PostgreSQL
connection that uses the replication protocol. The connection must be made
with a user ID that has REPLICATION
permissions
(see Section 22.2) or is a superuser,
and pg_hba.conf
must permit the replication connection. The server must also be configured
with max_wal_senders set high enough to provide at
least one walsender for the backup plus one for WAL streaming (if used).
There can be multiple pg_basebackup
s running at the same time, but it is usually
better from a performance point of view to take only one backup, and copy
the result.
pg_basebackup can make a base backup from
not only a primary server but also a standby. To take a backup from a standby,
set up the standby so that it can accept replication connections (that is, set
max_wal_senders
and hot_standby,
and configure its pg_hba.conf
appropriately).
You will also need to enable full_page_writes on the primary.
Note that there are some limitations in taking a backup from a standby:
The backup history file is not created in the database cluster backed up.
pg_basebackup cannot force the standby
to switch to a new WAL file at the end of backup.
When you are using -X none
, if write activity on
the primary is low, pg_basebackup may
need to wait a long time for the last WAL file required for the backup
to be switched and archived. In this case, it may be useful to run
pg_switch_wal
on the primary in order to
trigger an immediate WAL file switch.
If the standby is promoted to be primary during backup, the backup fails.
All WAL records required for the backup must contain sufficient full-page writes,
which requires you to enable full_page_writes
on the primary.
Whenever pg_basebackup is taking a base
backup, the server's pg_stat_progress_basebackup
view will report the progress of the backup.
See Section 28.4.6 for details.
The following command-line options control the location and format of the output:
-D directory
--pgdata=directory
Sets the target directory to write the output to. pg_basebackup will create this directory (and any missing parent directories) if it does not exist. If it already exists, it must be empty.
When the backup is in tar format, the target directory may be
specified as -
(dash), causing the tar file to be
written to stdout
.
This option is required.
-F format
--format=format
Selects the format for the output. format
can be one of the following:
p
plain
Write the output as plain files, with the same layout as the
source server's data directory and tablespaces. When the cluster has
no additional tablespaces, the whole database will be placed in
the target directory. If the cluster contains additional
tablespaces, the main data directory will be placed in the
target directory, but all other tablespaces will be placed
in the same absolute path as they have on the source server.
(See --tablespace-mapping
to change that.)
This is the default format.
t
tar
Write the output as tar files in the target directory. The main
data directory's contents will be written to a file named
base.tar
, and each other tablespace will be
written to a separate tar file named after that tablespace's OID.
If the target directory is specified as -
(dash), the tar contents will be written to
standard output, suitable for piping to (for example)
gzip. This is only allowed if
the cluster has no additional tablespaces and WAL
streaming is not used.
-R
--write-recovery-conf
Creates a
standby.signal
file and appends
connection settings to the postgresql.auto.conf
file in the target directory (or within the base archive file when
using tar format). This eases setting up a standby server using the
results of the backup.
The postgresql.auto.conf
file will record the connection
settings and, if specified, the replication slot
that pg_basebackup is using, so that
streaming replication will use the same settings later on.
-t target
--target=target
Instructs the server where to place the base backup. The default target
is client
, which specifies that the backup should
be sent to the machine where pg_basebackup
is running. If the target is instead set to
server:/some/path
, the backup will be stored on
the machine where the server is running in the
/some/path
directory. Storing a backup on the
server requires superuser privileges or having privileges of the
pg_write_server_files
role. If the target is set to
blackhole
, the contents are discarded and not
stored anywhere. This should only be used for testing purposes, as you
will not end up with an actual backup.
Since WAL streaming is implemented by
pg_basebackup rather than by the server,
this option cannot be used together with -Xstream
.
Since that is the default, when this option is specified, you must also
specify either -Xfetch
or -Xnone
.
-T olddir
=newdir
--tablespace-mapping=olddir
=newdir
Relocates the tablespace in directory olddir
to newdir
during the backup. To be
effective, olddir
must exactly match the
path specification of the tablespace as it is defined on the source
server. (But it is not an error if there is no tablespace
in olddir
on the source server.)
Meanwhile newdir
is a directory in the
receiving host's filesystem. As with the main target directory,
newdir
need not exist already, but if
it does exist it must be empty.
Both olddir
and newdir
must be absolute paths. If
either path needs to contain an equal sign (=
),
precede that with a backslash. This option can be specified multiple
times for multiple tablespaces.
If a tablespace is relocated in this way, the symbolic links inside the main data directory are updated to point to the new location. So the new data directory is ready to be used for a new server instance with all tablespaces in the updated locations.
Currently, this option only works with plain output format; it is ignored if tar format is selected.
--waldir=waldir
Sets the directory to write WAL (write-ahead log) files to.
By default WAL files will be placed in
the pg_wal
subdirectory of the target
directory, but this option can be used to place them elsewhere.
waldir
must be an absolute path.
As with the main target directory,
waldir
need not exist already, but if
it does exist it must be empty.
This option can only be specified when
the backup is in plain format.
-X method
--wal-method=method
Includes the required WAL (write-ahead log) files in the
backup. This will include all write-ahead logs generated during
the backup. Unless the method none
is specified,
it is possible to start a postmaster in the target
directory without the need to consult the WAL archive, thus
making the output a completely standalone backup.
The following method
s for collecting the
write-ahead logs are supported:
n
none
Don't include write-ahead logs in the backup.
f
fetch
The write-ahead log files are collected at the end of the backup. Therefore, it is necessary for the source server's wal_keep_size parameter to be set high enough that the required log data is not removed before the end of the backup. If the required log data has been recycled before it's time to transfer it, the backup will fail and be unusable.
When tar format is used, the write-ahead log files will be
included in the base.tar
file.
s
stream
Stream write-ahead log data while the backup is being taken. This method will open a second connection to the server and start streaming the write-ahead log in parallel while running the backup. Therefore, it will require two replication connections not just one. As long as the client can keep up with the write-ahead log data, using this method requires no extra write-ahead logs to be saved on the source server.
When tar format is used, the write-ahead log files will be
written to a separate file named pg_wal.tar
(if the server is a version earlier than 10, the file will be named
pg_xlog.tar
).
This value is the default.
-z
--gzip
Enables gzip compression of tar file output, with the default
compression level. Compression is only available when using
the tar format, and the suffix .gz
will
automatically be added to all tar filenames.
-Z level
-Z [{client|server}-]method
[:detail
]
--compress=level
--compress=[{client|server}-]method
[:detail
]
Requests compression of the backup. If client
or
server
is included, it specifies where the
compression is to be performed. Compressing on the server will reduce
transfer bandwidth but will increase server CPU consumption. The
default is client
except when
--target
is used. In that case, the backup is not
being sent to the client, so only server compression is sensible.
When -Xstream
, which is the default, is used,
server-side compression will not be applied to the WAL. To compress
the WAL, use client-side compression, or
specify -Xfetch
.
The compression method can be set to gzip
,
lz4
, zstd
,
none
for no compression or an integer (no
compression if 0, gzip
if greater than 0).
A compression detail string can optionally be specified.
If the detail string is an integer, it specifies the compression
level. Otherwise, it should be a comma-separated list of items,
each of the form keyword
or
keyword=value
.
Currently, the supported keywords are level
and workers
.
The detail string cannot be used when the compression method
is specified as a plain integer.
If no compression level is specified, the default compression level
will be used. If only a level is specified without mentioning an
algorithm, gzip
compression will be used if the
level is greater than 0, and no compression will be used if the level
is 0.
When the tar format is used with gzip
,
lz4
, or zstd
, the suffix
.gz
, .lz4
, or
.zst
, respectively, will be automatically added to
all tar filenames. When the plain format is used, client-side
compression may not be specified, but it is still possible to request
server-side compression. If this is done, the server will compress the
backup for transmission, and the client will decompress and extract it.
When this option is used in combination with
-Xstream
, pg_wal.tar
will
be compressed using gzip
if client-side gzip
compression is selected, but will not be compressed if any other
compression algorithm is selected, or if server-side compression
is selected.
The following command-line options control the generation of the backup and the invocation of the program:
-c {fast|spread}
--checkpoint={fast|spread}
Sets checkpoint mode to fast (immediate) or spread (the default) (see Section 26.3.3).
-C
--create-slot
Specifies that the replication slot named by the
--slot
option should be created before starting
the backup. An error is raised if the slot already exists.
-l label
--label=label
Sets the label for the backup. If none is specified, a default value of
“pg_basebackup base backup
” will be used.
-n
--no-clean
By default, when pg_basebackup
aborts with an
error, it removes any directories it might have created before
discovering that it cannot finish the job (for example, the target
directory and write-ahead log directory). This option inhibits
tidying-up and is thus useful for debugging.
Note that tablespace directories are not cleaned up either way.
-N
--no-sync
By default, pg_basebackup
will wait for all files
to be written safely to disk. This option causes
pg_basebackup
to return without waiting, which is
faster, but means that a subsequent operating system crash can leave
the base backup corrupt. Generally, this option is useful for testing
but should not be used when creating a production installation.
-P
--progress
Enables progress reporting. Turning this on will deliver an approximate
progress report during the backup. Since the database may change during
the backup, this is only an approximation and may not end at exactly
100%
. In particular, when WAL log is included in the
backup, the total amount of data cannot be estimated in advance, and
in this case the estimated target size will increase once it passes the
total estimate without WAL.
-r rate
--max-rate=rate
Sets the maximum transfer rate at which data is collected from the
source server. This can be useful to limit the impact
of pg_basebackup on the server. Values
are in kilobytes per second. Use a suffix of M
to indicate megabytes per second. A suffix of k
is also accepted, and has no effect. Valid values are between 32
kilobytes per second and 1024 megabytes per second.
This option always affects transfer of the data directory. Transfer of
WAL files is only affected if the collection method
is fetch
.
-S slotname
--slot=slotname
This option can only be used together with -X
stream
. It causes WAL streaming to use the specified
replication slot. If the base backup is intended to be used as a
streaming-replication standby using a replication slot, the standby
should then use the same replication slot name as
primary_slot_name. This ensures that the
primary server does not remove any necessary WAL data in the time
between the end of the base backup and the start of streaming
replication on the new standby.
The specified replication slot has to exist unless the
option -C
is also used.
If this option is not specified and the server supports temporary replication slots (version 10 and later), then a temporary replication slot is automatically used for WAL streaming.
-v
--verbose
Enables verbose mode. Will output some extra steps during startup and shutdown, as well as show the exact file name that is currently being processed if progress reporting is also enabled.
--manifest-checksums=algorithm
Specifies the checksum algorithm that should be applied to each file
included in the backup manifest. Currently, the available
algorithms are NONE
, CRC32C
,
SHA224
, SHA256
,
SHA384
, and SHA512
.
The default is CRC32C
.
If NONE
is selected, the backup manifest will
not contain any checksums. Otherwise, it will contain a checksum
of each file in the backup using the specified algorithm. In addition,
the manifest will always contain a SHA256
checksum of its own contents. The SHA
algorithms
are significantly more CPU-intensive than CRC32C
,
so selecting one of them may increase the time required to complete
the backup.
Using a SHA hash function provides a cryptographically secure digest of each file for users who wish to verify that the backup has not been tampered with, while the CRC32C algorithm provides a checksum that is much faster to calculate; it is good at catching errors due to accidental changes but is not resistant to malicious modifications. Note that, to be useful against an adversary who has access to the backup, the backup manifest would need to be stored securely elsewhere or otherwise verified not to have been modified since the backup was taken.
pg_verifybackup can be used to check the integrity of a backup against the backup manifest.
--manifest-force-encode
Forces all filenames in the backup manifest to be hex-encoded. If this option is not specified, only non-UTF8 filenames are hex-encoded. This option is mostly intended to test that tools which read a backup manifest file properly handle this case.
--no-estimate-size
Prevents the server from estimating the total
amount of backup data that will be streamed, resulting in the
backup_total
column in the
pg_stat_progress_basebackup
view
always being NULL
.
Without this option, the backup will start by enumerating the size of the entire database, and then go back and send the actual contents. This may make the backup take slightly longer, and in particular it will take longer before the first data is sent. This option is useful to avoid such estimation time if it's too long.
This option is not allowed when using --progress
.
--no-manifest
Disables generation of a backup manifest. If this option is not specified, the server will generate and send a backup manifest which can be verified using pg_verifybackup. The manifest is a list of every file present in the backup with the exception of any WAL files that may be included. It also stores the size, last modification time, and an optional checksum for each file.
--no-slot
Prevents the creation of a temporary replication slot for the backup.
By default, if log streaming is selected but no slot name is given
with the -S
option, then a temporary replication
slot is created (if supported by the source server).
The main purpose of this option is to allow taking a base backup when the server has no free replication slots. Using a replication slot is almost always preferred, because it prevents needed WAL from being removed by the server during the backup.
--no-verify-checksums
Disables verification of checksums, if they are enabled on the server the base backup is taken from.
By default, checksums are verified and checksum failures will result
in a non-zero exit status. However, the base backup will not be
removed in such a case, as if the --no-clean
option
had been used. Checksum verification failures will also be reported
in the
pg_stat_database
view.
The following command-line options control the connection to the source server:
-d connstr
--dbname=connstr
Specifies parameters used to connect to the server, as a connection string; these will override any conflicting command line options.
The option is called --dbname
for consistency with other
client applications, but because pg_basebackup
doesn't connect to any particular database in the cluster, any database
name in the connection string will be ignored.
-h host
--host=host
Specifies the host name of the machine on which the server is
running. If the value begins with a slash, it is used as the
directory for a Unix domain socket. The default is taken
from the PGHOST
environment variable, if set,
else a Unix domain socket connection is attempted.
-p port
--port=port
Specifies the TCP port or local Unix domain socket file
extension on which the server is listening for connections.
Defaults to the PGPORT
environment variable, if
set, or a compiled-in default.
-s interval
--status-interval=interval
Specifies the number of seconds between status packets sent back to the source server. Smaller values allow more accurate monitoring of backup progress from the server. A value of zero disables periodic status updates completely, although an update will still be sent when requested by the server, to avoid timeout-based disconnects. The default value is 10 seconds.
-U username
--username=username
Specifies the user name to connect as.
-w
--no-password
Prevents issuing a password prompt. If the server requires
password authentication and a password is not available by
other means such as a .pgpass
file, the
connection attempt will fail. This option can be useful in
batch jobs and scripts where no user is present to enter a
password.
-W
--password
Forces pg_basebackup to prompt for a password before connecting to the source server.
This option is never essential, since
pg_basebackup will automatically prompt
for a password if the server demands password authentication.
However, pg_basebackup will waste a
connection attempt finding out that the server wants a password.
In some cases it is worth typing -W
to avoid the extra
connection attempt.
Other options are also available:
-V
--version
Prints the pg_basebackup version and exits.
-?
--help
Shows help about pg_basebackup command line arguments, and exits.
This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see Section 34.15).
The environment variable PG_COLOR
specifies whether to use
color in diagnostic messages. Possible values are
always
, auto
and
never
.
At the beginning of the backup, a checkpoint needs to be performed on the
source server. This can take some time (especially if the option
--checkpoint=fast
is not used), during
which pg_basebackup will appear to be idle.
The backup will include all files in the data directory and tablespaces, including the configuration files and any additional files placed in the directory by third parties, except certain temporary files managed by PostgreSQL. But only regular files and directories are copied, except that symbolic links used for tablespaces are preserved. Symbolic links pointing to certain directories known to PostgreSQL are copied as empty directories. Other symbolic links and special device files are skipped. See Section 55.4 for the precise details.
In plain format, tablespaces will be backed up to the same path
they have on the source server, unless the
option --tablespace-mapping
is used. Without
this option, running a plain format base backup on the same host as the
server will not work if tablespaces are in use, because the backup would
have to be written to the same directory locations as the original
tablespaces.
When tar format is used, it is the user's responsibility to unpack each
tar file before starting a PostgreSQL server that uses the data. If there
are additional tablespaces, the
tar files for them need to be unpacked in the correct locations. In this
case the symbolic links for those tablespaces will be created by the server
according to the contents of the tablespace_map
file that is
included in the base.tar
file.
pg_basebackup works with servers of the same
or an older major version, down to 9.1. However, WAL streaming mode (-X
stream
) only works with server version 9.3 and later, and tar format
(--format=tar
) only works with server version 9.5
and later.
pg_basebackup will preserve group permissions for data files if group permissions are enabled on the source cluster.
To create a base backup of the server at mydbserver
and store it in the local directory
/usr/local/pgsql/data
:
$
pg_basebackup -h mydbserver -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
To create a backup of the local server with one compressed
tar file for each tablespace, and store it in the directory
backup
, showing a progress report while running:
$
pg_basebackup -D backup -Ft -z -P
To create a backup of a single-tablespace local database and compress this with bzip2:
$
pg_basebackup -D - -Ft -X fetch | bzip2 > backup.tar.bz2
(This command will fail if there are multiple tablespaces in the database.)
To create a backup of a local database where the tablespace in
/opt/ts
is relocated
to ./backup/ts
:
$
pg_basebackup -D backup/data -T /opt/ts=$(pwd)/backup/ts
To create a backup of a local server with one tar file for each tablespace
compressed with gzip at level 9, stored in the
directory backup
:
$
pg_basebackup -D backup -Ft --compress=gzip:9