Interactive Demo

Backup and Recovery: Single-Server Streaming - Recovery

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In the previous step, we created a full backup of the example database. But it's not a real backup until we've successfully restored it - so let's end with that.

This demo is interactive

You can follow along right in your browser. When you click "Start Now," Katacoda will load a Docker Compose environment with two container images representing a PostgreSQL 13 server with the Pagila database loaded (named pg) and a backup server for Barman (named backup).

Once you see a barman@backup prompt, you can follow the steps below.

Clicking Start Now will load an interactive terminal in this window

Something terrible has happened to our example database! This should list all the tables:

psql -h pg -d pagila -U barman -c '\dt'
Output
Did not find any relations.

All the data is gone!

Ok, I just didn't populate the data for this step, in order to demonstrate a total loss. Fortunately, we still have a backup!

barman list-backup pg

Let's instruct Barman to ssh into the database server and restore the backup.

  1. Connect to pg and shut down the database cluster:

    ssh postgres@pg /usr/lib/postgresql/13/bin/pg_ctl \
    --pgdata=/var/lib/postgresql/data stop
    Output
    waiting for server to shut down.... done
server stopped

  2. Back up the corrupt data directory, just in case something goes wrong. Then delete the corrupt data.

    ssh postgres@pg "cp -a /var/lib/postgresql/data \
    /var/lib/postgresql/old_data \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/postgresql/data/*"

  3. Use Barman's recover command to connect to pg and restore the latest backup 

    barman recover --remote-ssh-command 'ssh postgres@pg' \
        pg latest \
        /var/lib/postgresql/data
    Output
    Starting remote restore for server pg using backup 20210330T040549
Destination directory: /var/lib/postgresql/data
Remote command: ssh postgres@pg
Using safe horizon time for smart rsync copy: 2021-03-30 04:05:58+00:00
Copying the base backup.
Copying required WAL segments.
Generating archive status files
Identify dangerous settings in destination directory.

Recovery completed (start time: 2021-03-31 02:29:23.555186, elapsed time: 1 second)

Your PostgreSQL server has been successfully prepared for recovery!

    Barman handles connecting to the destination server, but we do have to provide a valid path on that server. In this example, the PostgreSQL cluster lives in /var/lib/postgresql/data and we're asking Barman to overwrite it with the backup.

  4. Restart the server:

    ssh postgres@pg "/usr/lib/postgresql/13/bin/pg_ctl \
    --pgdata=/var/lib/postgresql/data \
    -l /var/log/postgresql/pg.log \
    start \
    ; tail /var/log/postgresql/pg.log"
    Output
    waiting for server to start.... done
server started
2021-03-31 02:29:12.761 UTC [2201] LOG:  database system is shut down
2021-03-31 02:30:13.156 UTC [2515] LOG:  starting PostgreSQL 13.2 (Debian 13.2-1.pgdg100+1) on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Debian 8.3.0-6) 8.3.0, 64-bit
2021-03-31 02:30:13.157 UTC [2515] LOG:  listening on IPv4 address "0.0.0.0", port 5432
2021-03-31 02:30:13.157 UTC [2515] LOG:  listening on IPv6 address "::", port 5432
2021-03-31 02:30:13.160 UTC [2515] LOG:  listening on Unix socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"
2021-03-31 02:30:13.164 UTC [2516] LOG:  database system was interrupted; last known up at 2021-03-30 04:05:58 UTC
2021-03-31 02:30:13.337 UTC [2516] LOG:  redo starts at 0/4000028
2021-03-31 02:30:13.337 UTC [2516] LOG:  consistent recovery state reached at 0/4000138
2021-03-31 02:30:13.337 UTC [2516] LOG:  redo done at 0/4000138
2021-03-31 02:30:13.363 UTC [2515] LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections

Now we should be able to reconnect to the database:

psql -h pg -d pagila -U barman
Output
psql (13.2 (Ubuntu 13.2-1.pgdg20.04+1))
Type "help" for help.

pagila=#

...And re-run the query we started out with:

select * from actor where last_name='KILMER';
\q
Output
 actor_id | first_name | last_name |      last_update       
----------+------------+-----------+------------------------
       23 | SANDRA     | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
       45 | REESE      | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
       55 | FAY        | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
      153 | MINNIE     | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
      162 | OPRAH      | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
(5 rows)

Ok, so far so good - but, we're missing the update we wrote to this data! Remember, that wasn't in the base backup, it was in a partial WAL file... Fortunately, Barman still has it and knows how to use it.

Let's try this recovery process again:

  1. Connect to pg and shut down the database cluster:

    ssh postgres@pg /usr/lib/postgresql/13/bin/pg_ctl \
    --pgdata=/var/lib/postgresql/data stop

  2. Back up the corrupt data directory, just in case something goes wrong. Then delete the corrupt data.

    ssh postgres@pg "cp -a /var/lib/postgresql/data \
    /var/lib/postgresql/old_data \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/postgresql/data/*"
    Output
    waiting for server to shut down.... done
server stopped

  3. Instruct Barman to connect to pg and restore the latest backup with the --get-wal option - this triggers WAL fetching, including partial WAL files, during the recovery process.

    barman recover --remote-ssh-command 'ssh postgres@pg' \
        --get-wal \
        pg latest \
        /var/lib/postgresql/data
    Output
    Starting remote restore for server pg using backup 20210330T040549
Destination directory: /var/lib/postgresql/data
Remote command: ssh postgres@pg
Copying the base backup.
Generating recovery configuration
Identify dangerous settings in destination directory.

WARNING: 'get-wal' is in the specified 'recovery_options'.
Before you start up the PostgreSQL server, please review the postgresql.auto.conf file
inside the target directory. Make sure that 'restore_command' can be executed by the PostgreSQL user.

Recovery completed (start time: 2021-03-31 00:47:46.722740, elapsed time: 1 second)

Your PostgreSQL server has been successfully prepared for recovery!

  4. Restart the server:

    ssh postgres@pg "/usr/lib/postgresql/13/bin/pg_ctl \
    --pgdata=/var/lib/postgresql/data \
    -l /var/log/postgresql/pg.log \
    start \
    ; tail /var/log/postgresql/pg.log"
    Output
    waiting for server to start..... done
server started
2021-03-31 00:47:52.278 UTC [250] LOG:  listening on IPv6 address "::", port 5432
2021-03-31 00:47:52.282 UTC [250] LOG:  listening on Unix socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"
2021-03-31 00:47:52.286 UTC [251] LOG:  database system was interrupted; last known up at 2021-03-30 04:05:58 UTC
ERROR: WAL file '00000002.history' not found in server 'pg' (SSH host: 192.168.80.2)
ERROR: Remote 'barman get-wal' command has failed!
2021-03-31 00:47:52.863 UTC [251] LOG:  starting archive recovery
2021-03-31 00:47:53.350 UTC [251] LOG:  restored log file "000000010000000000000004" from archive
2021-03-31 00:47:53.362 UTC [251] LOG:  redo starts at 0/4000028
2021-03-31 00:47:53.362 UTC [251] LOG:  consistent recovery state reached at 0/4000138
2021-03-31 00:47:53.363 UTC [250] LOG:  database system is ready to accept read only connections
about those errors...

You may notice two lines starting with "ERROR:" mid-way through the recovery log. They're fine - that's just PostgreSQL scanning to make sure it has the most recent timeline. By going through this recovery, we've actually created a new timeline - in fact, if you were to run through the four steps above again, you'd see that now 00000002.history is found and PostgreSQL goes looking for 00000003.history... Try it!

For more on PostgreSQL backup timelines, see Continuous Archiving in the PostgreSQL documentation.

Now check the data again:

psql -h pg -d pagila -U barman -c \
    "select * from actor where last_name='KILMER'"
Output
 actor_id | first_name | last_name |          last_update          
----------+------------+-----------+-------------------------------
       45 | REESE      | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
       55 | FAY        | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
      153 | MINNIE     | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
      162 | OPRAH      | KILMER    | 2020-02-15 09:34:33+00
       23 | ALOYSIUS   | KILMER    | 2021-03-30 04:06:55.101099+00
(5 rows)

Good ol' Aloysius is back!

Further Reading

For more details on recovery of partial WAL files, see: Limitations of partial WAL files with recovery in the Barman guide.

Conclusion

This demonstration barely scratches the surface of what is possible with Barman, but hopefully it has provided you with a taste of its capabilities! For more details, visit https://pgbarman.org/

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