Release Announcement Barman 3.1.0

Type

Highlights

Enhancement

New compressions options for potentially significant storage space savings in certain cases and faster base backups. 

Backups taken with `backup_method = postgres` can now be compressed using lz4 and zstd compression by setting `backup_compression = lz4` or `backup_compression = zstd` respectively. 

These options are only available on PostgreSQL 15 (currently beta) or later and will be supported once PostgreSQL 15 is generally available from the PostgreSQL community. These options will also be available for EPAS 15, which is currently scheduled to be generally available in Feb ‘23. 

New Feature

Potentially faster base backups using parallel server-side backup compression in PostgreSQL 15. 

A new option `backup_compression_workers` is available which sets the number of threads used for parallel compression. This is currently only available with `backup_method = postgres` and `backup_compression = zstd`.

This option is only available on PostgreSQL 15 (currently beta) or later and will be supported once PostgreSQL 15 is generally available from the PostgreSQL community. Thisx options will also be available for EPAS 15, which is currently scheduled to be generally available in Feb ‘23. 

New Feature

A new option `primary_conninfo` can be set to avoid the need for backups of standbys to wait for a WAL switch to occur on the primary when finalizing the backup. Barman will use the connection string in `primary_conninfo` to perform WAL switches on the primary when stopping the backup.

Enhancement

Allow `barman receive-wal` maintenance options (`--stop`, `--reset`,  `--drop-slot` and `--create-slot`) to run against inactive servers.

Enhancement

Add `--port` option to `barman-wal-archive` and `barman-wal-restore` commands so that a custom SSH port can be used without requiring any SSH configuration.

Security 

Support for certain Rsync versions patched for CVE-2022-29154 which require a trailing newline in the `--files-from` argument.

Bug Fix

Ensure PostgreSQL connections are closed cleanly during the  execution of `barman cron`.

Bug Fix

`barman generate-manifest` now treats pre-existing backup_manifest files as an error condition.

Bug Fix

backup_manifest files are renamed by appending the backup ID during recovery operations to prevent future backups including an old backup_manifest file.

Bug Fix

Fix epoch timestamps in json output which were not timezone-aware.

Bug Fix

The output of `pg_basebackup` is now written to the Barman log file while the backup is in progress.