Barman 1.5.0 released

28 September 2015: 2ndQuadrant is proud to announce the release of
version 1.5.0 of Barman, Backup and Recovery Manager for PostgreSQL.

This major release features the get-wal command, which turns Barman into
a WAL mine from which you can extract any transaction log file you need.
Barman can now be easily integrated with any PostgreSQL standby server
as a fallback method for WAL synchronisation.

Another important new feature is retry hook scripts that can be executed
before or after a backup command or the archive of a WAL file.
Differently from a standard hook script, already available in Barman, a
retry hook script is executed indefinitely until it succeeds.

With version 1.5.0, Barman enhances its robustness, by adding checks on
wal_level settings, by forbidding the deletion of a running backup, by
requesting a successful check before initiating a backup, etc.

Barman now checks for conflicting paths, making sure that the same
directory cannot be shared by more than a target (i.e. base backups, WAL
archive, incoming directory, etc.), even across different servers within
the same installation.

In terms of user experience, the active option grants users to
temporarily disable a server in Barman, for operational purposes, while
still accessing its catalogue.

Minor bugs have also been fixed.

For a complete list of changes, see the "Release Notes" section below.

Features in detail
------------------

Barman get-wal
No more standby servers that fall out of synchronisation with the
master server, thanks to Barman's get-wal command. Design complex HA
and DR architectures of PostgreSQL databases, knowing that you can
now rely on an 'infinite' source of WAL files for any of your
servers. Look at the barman-wal-restore script for an idea on how
you can integrate get-wal with your PostgreSQL standby servers.

Retry hook scripts
You can now extend Barman by plugging your custom scripts before and
after taking a backup operation or archiving a WAL file, knowing
that Barman will repeat them until they succeed. You can now build
your own pipeline around Barman, for example by storing a WAL in the
cloud once it reaches Barman.

Links
-----

- Website: http://www.pgbarman.org/
- Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/
- Documentation: http://www.pgbarman.org/documentation/
- Man page, section 1: http://docs.pgbarman.org/barman.1.html
- Man page, section 5: http://docs.pgbarman.org/barman.5.html
- Support: http://www.pgbarman.org/support/
- pgespresso extension: https://github.com/2ndquadrant-it/pgespresso

Release notes
-------------

- Add support for the get-wal command which allows users to fetch any
WAL file from the archive of a specific server
- Add support for retry hook scripts, a special kind of hook scripts
that Barman tries to run until they succeed
- Add active configuration option for a server to temporarily disable
the server by setting it to False
- Add barman_lock_directory global option to change the location of
lock files (by default: 'barman_home')
- Execute the full suite of checks before starting a backup, and skip
it in case one or more checks fail
- Forbid to delete a running backup
- Analyse include directives of a PostgreSQL server during backup and
recover operations
- Add check for conflicting paths in the configuration of Barman, both
intra (by temporarily disabling a server) and inter-server (by
refusing any command, to any server).
- Add check for wal_level
- Add barman-wal-restore script to be used as restore_command on a
standby server, in conjunction with barman get-wal
- Implement a standard and consistent policy for error management
- Improved cache management of backups
- Improved management of configuration in unit tests
- Tutorial and man page sources have been converted to Markdown format
- Add code documentation through Sphinx
- Complete refactor of the code responsible for managing the backup
and the recover commands
- Changed internal directory structure of a backup
- Introduce copy_method option (currently fixed to rsync)
- Bug fixes:
- Manage options without '=' in PostgreSQL configuration files
- Preserve Timeline history files (Fixes: #70)
- Workaround for rsync on SUSE Linux (Closes: #13 and #26)
- Disables dangerous settings in postgresql.auto.conf (Closes:
#68)
- Fixed error in WAL rate calculation

Download
--------

- Release Notes:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/1.5.0/
- Sources:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/1.5.0/barman-1.5.0.tar.gz/download
- RPMs for RHEL/CentOS 5:
- Barman:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/1.5.0/barman-1.5.0-1.rhel5.noarch.rpm/download
- Dependencies:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/rhel5-deps/
- RPMs for RHEL/CentOS 6:
- Barman:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/1.5.0/barman-1.5.0-1.rhel6.noarch.rpm/download
- Dependencies:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/rhel6-deps/
- PyPI: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/barman/1.5.0
- pgespresso on PostgreSQL Extension framework (PGXN):
http://pgxn.org/dist/pgespresso/
- pgespresso RPM/Debian packages:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/pgespresso/
- Online documentation: http://www.pgbarman.org/documentation
- PDF documentation:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgbarman/files/1.5.0/barman-tutorial.en.pdf/download

About
-----

Barman (Backup and Recovery Manager) is an open source administration
tool for disaster recovery of PostgreSQL servers written in Python. It
allows your organisation to perform remote backups of multiple servers
in business critical environments and help DBAs during the recovery
phase. Barman's most requested features include backup catalogues,
incremental backup, retention policies, remote backup and recovery,
archiving and compression of WAL files and backups.
Barman is distributed under GNU GPL 3.

--
Giulio Calacoci - 2ndQuadrant Italia
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
giulio(dot)calacoci(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)it | www.2ndQuadrant.it