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pgBackRest

DEVOPS
Velocity5.0

Reliable backup and restore solution for PostgreSQL

pgbackrest.org ↗

pgBackRest tracks PostgreSQL 19 beta by beta, patching the hangs it finds along the way.

postgresqlbackupobject storageleast privilegerelease cadence
◆Current state
pgBackRest is in the tail of the 2.59 cycle, which brought PostgreSQL 19 support and restricted every command except restore from running as root. The 2.59.1 patch keeps step with PostgreSQL 19beta3 and clears three defects, including a hang that occurred whenever the chunk buffer was smaller than the input buffer. Release cadence remains a few feature releases a year with patches slotted between them.
◆Where it's heading
Two currents continue. Support for the next PostgreSQL major arrives experimentally a full release before it is needed — 18 in 2.55.0, 19 in 2.59.0, and now tracking 19's betas point by point — so the backup tool is ready before the database ships. The second is a move away from ambient privilege and toward cloud-native identity: managed identities and pod identity in place of stored keys, and the root restriction narrowing what a compromised invocation can reach. The 2.59.1 fixes are the ordinary cost of that pace, including a packaging fault in the GitHub source archives.
◆Prediction
Expect the beta-tracking patches to continue through PostgreSQL 19's release cycle, with the next feature release arriving after 19 goes final rather than before it.

◆Recent moves

  1. 1d ago

    v2.59.1: PostgreSQL 19beta3 Support

    PostgreSQL 19beta3 support arrives one beta after 19 support itself, continuing the pattern of staying ahead of the database. Alongside it, a hang triggered whenever the chunk buffer was smaller than the input buffer, a backup label compared against the wrong full backup set, and GitHub-generated source archives that were missing files needed to build.

    View source ↗
  2. 29d ago

    v2.59.0: PostgreSQL 19 Support

    The release that set the current cycle: PostgreSQL 19 support, a new distribution tarball with pregenerated documentation and code to simplify packaging, and the restriction of root execution to the restore command alone. The privilege change is the notable one — it narrows the blast radius of a compromised invocation and requires an explicit allow-root to opt back out.

    View source ↗
  3. 7mo ago

    v2.58.0: Object Storage Improvements

    The object-storage release, and the clearest statement of the identity direction: Azure managed identities and experimental S3 EKS pod identity replace stored credentials, with configurable TLS cipher suites alongside. Repositories are being made to work the way cloud platforms expect rather than the way a filesystem did.

    View source ↗
  4. 10mo ago

    v2.57.0: Suppress Repository Symlinks

    A repo-symlink option to suppress repository symlink creation, plus HTTP retries for 408 and 429 responses. Small operator controls of the kind this project adds steadily — each one removes an assumption that a storage backend may not share.

    View source ↗
  5. 1y ago

    v2.55.1: Bug Fixes

    A two-item patch, one of them a revert of an S3 content-md5 optimization. Routine correction shipped the same hour as the 2.56.0 feature release.

    View source ↗
  6. 1y ago

    v2.56.0: Progress Info Improvements

    Restore progress reporting arrives in the info command, with a progress-only detail level. Visibility into a long-running restore is the sort of operational affordance this project keeps adding for people running backups at scale rather than testing them.

    View source ↗