We are pleased to announce the release of Barman 3.17.0.
Barman (Backup and Recovery Manager) is an open-source administration tool for remote backups and disaster recovery of PostgreSQL servers in business-critical environments. It relies on PostgreSQL’s point-in-time recovery technology, allowing DBAs to manage a complete catalog of backups and the recovery phase of multiple remote servers from one location.
This release focuses on operational flexibility for disabled servers, compliance improvements for S3 storage, and important deprecation notices regarding compression.
Operations on Inactive Servers
Barman 3.17 introduces the ability to perform read and recovery operations on servers that have been manually disabled or marked inactive. This allows administrators to query the catalog, list files, and perform restores (including get-wal) even if the specific server configuration is disabled to prevent new backup execution. This provides a safer environment for restoring data from servers that may have configuration conflicts.
S3 Object Lock Support
To support governance and compliance retention policies, the barman-cloud-backup-delete command now includes a --check-object-lock option. This prevents the accidental deletion of objects in AWS S3 that are protected by Object Lock, aborting the operation if locked objects are detected.
Custom SSH Ports for Remote Restore
The barman restore command now accepts a --recovery-option-port flag. This allows users to specify a custom SSH port for the barman-wal-restore command, facilitating remote restores in environments with non-standard port configurations.
Deprecation of Custom Compression: The custom compression option (and related filters) is now deprecated. We strongly advise users to migrate to one of Barman's built-in supported algorithms (gzip, bzip2, lz4, xz, zstd, or pigz) to ensure future compatibility, performance, and reliability.
Expanded S3 Compatibility: We have improved error handling for non-compliant S3 object stores (such as certain MinIO configurations) during backup deletion. Barman now correctly identifies error messages containing "content-MD5" to prevent unnecessary failures.
Delta Restore Logic: Fixed an issue where the destination directory was being removed prior to a restore, ensuring delta restores now function correctly.
Mount Point Safety: Resolved an issue where restore operations could fail with "rm execution failed" errors. Barman now avoids attempting to remove destination directories for PGDATA and tablespaces if they are mount points.
macOS Compatibility: Fixed a UnicodeDecodeError that occurred when checking for file encryption on macOS systems, ensuring graceful handling of undecodable bytes.
Website: https://pgbarman.org/
Download: https://www.enterprisedb.com/software-downloads-postgres#barman
Documentation: https://docs.pgbarman.org/
Release Notes: https://docs.pgbarman.org/release/3.17.0/releases/index.html
Support: https://pgbarman.org/support/
Barman is distributed under the GNU GPL 3 license and maintained by EnterpriseDB (EDB).