Re: pg_basebackup --incremental

pgbackrest does WAL archiving for you, as seen here:
$ dir /Database/backups/pgbackrest/
total 64
drwxr-x--- 3 nobody nobody 21 2024-06-08 21:35:11 archive/
drwxr-x--- 3 nobody nobody 21 2025-06-11 13:04:10 backup/

Thus, it obviates the need for the rsync commands.

If, like me, you still want the WAL files to *also* be somewhere else, then
create a cron job to rsync {repo1-path}/pgbackrest/archive to <insert
destination here> every15 minutes or so. Add "--del" to remove the WALs
that pgbackrest deletes when it purges the oldest saveset.

On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 2:26 PM Sam Stearns <sam(dot)stearns(at)dat(dot)com> wrote:

> Awesome. Thank you, Ron.
>
> We have our archive_command set to push WAL's to standby as such:
>
> archive_command = 'test ! -f /postgres_wal_archive/rtsstage/%f && rsync -a
> %p /postgres_wal_archive/rtsstage/%f && rsync -a %p postgres(at)10(dot)36(dot)160(dot)48:
> /postgres_wal_archive/rtsstage/%f'
>
> How does incorporating pgbackrest affect that setup?
>
> On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 10:53 AM Ron Johnson <ronljohnsonjr(at)gmail(dot)com>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm certain this is all in the User Guide: $ grep -rh archive
>> $PGDATA/postgresql. conf* archive_mode = on #archive_command = '/bin/true'
>> archive_command = 'pgbackrest --stanza=nfs archive-push %p' Since changing
>> archive_mode
>> ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart
>> This Message Is From an External Sender
>> This message came from outside your organization.
>>
>> ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerEnd
>> I'm certain this is all in the User Guide:
>> $ grep -rh archive $PGDATA/postgresql.conf*
>> archive_mode = on
>> #archive_command = '/bin/true'
>> archive_command = 'pgbackrest --stanza=nfs archive-push %p'
>>
>> Since changing archive_mode requires a restart, but
>> changing archive_command just requires a reload, it's useful to have both
>> of those archive_command lines in your config. Always keep "archive_mode =
>> on" but disable it by setting archive_command to /bin/true (which will be a
>> rare occurrence).
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 1:40 PM Sam Stearns <sam(dot)stearns(at)dat(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Ron,
>>>
>>> If I may, please. What are the postgres.conf parameters you set
>>> specifically for pgBackRest?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Sam
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 3:21 PM Sam Stearns <sam(dot)stearns(at)dat(dot)com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks, Ron! We'll take another look at pgBackRest.
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 10:52 AM Ron Johnson <ronljohnsonjr(at)gmail(dot)com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 1: 43 PM Sam Stearns <sam. stearns@ dat. com>
>>>>> wrote: Howdy, We're running version 17. 6. Would anyone be able to point me
>>>>> to, or provide, some sample use cases / scripts / usage to deploy a
>>>>> pg_basebackup full + --incremental
>>>>> ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart
>>>>> This Message Is From an External Sender
>>>>> This message came from outside your organization.
>>>>>
>>>>> ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerEnd
>>>>> On Tue, Oct 28, 2025 at 1:43 PM Sam Stearns <sam(dot)stearns(at)dat(dot)com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Howdy,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We're running version 17.6. Would anyone be able to point me to, or
>>>>>> provide, some sample use cases / scripts / usage to deploy a pg_basebackup
>>>>>> full + --incremental strategy as a backup solution, please?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The question confuses me a bit (though maybe because weekly "full",
>>>>> and remainder "incremental" is pretty standard). PgBackRest really is
>>>>> quite simple and easy to configure if you back up to a local mount point
>>>>> (even when that mount point is NFS).
>>>>>
>>>>> This is in the "postgres" crontab:
>>>>> 15 01 * * Sun Type=full; pgbackrest backup --stanza=nfs --type=$Type
>>>>> &> logs/pgbackrest_$(date +"\%F_\%T")_${Type}.log
>>>>> 15 01 * * 1-6 Type=incr; pgbackrest backup --stanza=nfs --type=$Type
>>>>> &> logs/pgbackrest_$(date +"\%F_\%T")_${Type}.log
>>>>>
>>>>> And this is my /etc/pgbackrest.conf:
>>>>> [global]
>>>>> repo1-path=/Database/backups/pgbackrest
>>>>> repo1-cipher-type=aes-256-cbc
>>>>> repo1-cipher-pass=<redacted>
>>>>> repo1-bundle=y
>>>>> repo1-bundle-limit=20MiB
>>>>> repo1-bundle-size=200MiB
>>>>> [nfs]
>>>>> pg1-path=/Database/17/data
>>>>> resume=n
>>>>> start-fast=y
>>>>> stop-auto=y
>>>>> compress-type=zst
>>>>> log-level-console=detail
>>>>> log-level-file=info
>>>>> log-path=/var/lib/pgsql/logs/pgbackrest
>>>>> retention-full=4
>>>>> process-max=<nproc * 3/4>
>>>>> [nfs:archive-push]
>>>>> compress-type=zst
>>>>>
>>>>>
--
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