repmgr standby promote repmgr standby promote repmgr standby promote promote a standby to a primary Promotes a standby to a primary if the current primary has failed. This command requires a valid repmgr.conf file for the standby, either specified explicitly with -f/--config-file or located in a default location; no additional arguments are required. If &repmgrd; is active, you must execute repmgr service pause (&repmgr; 4.2 - 4.4: repmgr service pause) to temporarily disable &repmgrd; while making any changes to the replication cluster. If the standby promotion succeeds, the server will not need to be restarted. However any other standbys will need to follow the new primary, and will need to be restarted to do this. Beginning with repmgr 4.4, the option --siblings-follow can be used to have all other standbys (and a witness server, if in use) follow the new primary. If using &repmgrd;, when invoking repmgr standby promote (either directly via the promote_command, or in a script called via promote_command), --siblings-follow must not be included as a command line option for repmgr standby promote. In repmgr 4.3 and earlier, repmgr standby follow must be executed on each standby individually. &repmgr; will wait for up to promote_check_timeout seconds (default: 60) to verify that the standby has been promoted, and will check the promotion every promote_check_interval seconds (default: 1 second). Both values can be defined in repmgr.conf. If WAL replay is paused on the standby, and not all WAL files on the standby have been replayed, &repmgr; will not attempt to promote it. This is because if WAL replay is paused, PostgreSQL itself will not react to a promote command until WAL replay is resumed and all pending WAL has been replayed. This means attempting to promote PostgreSQL in this state will leave PostgreSQL in a condition where the promotion may occur at a unpredictable point in the future. Note that if the standby is in archive recovery, &repmgr; will not be able to determine if more WAL is pending replay, and will abort the promotion attempt if WAL replay is paused. $ repmgr -f /etc/repmgr.conf standby promote NOTICE: promoting standby to primary DETAIL: promoting server "node2" (ID: 2) using "pg_ctl -l /var/log/postgres/startup.log -w -D '/var/lib/postgres/data' promote" server promoting DEBUG: setting node 2 as primary and marking existing primary as failed NOTICE: STANDBY PROMOTE successful DETAIL: server "node2" (ID: 2) was successfully promoted to primary pg_promote() (PostgreSQL 12) From PostgreSQL 12, &repmgr; uses the pg_promote() function to promote a standby to primary. By default, execution of pg_promote() is restricted to superusers. If the repmgr use is not a superuser, execution permission for this function must be granted with e.g.: GRANT EXECUTE ON FUNCTION pg_catalog.pg_promote TO repmgr A future &repmgr; release will relax this restriction by falling back to pg_ctl promote, as used for pre-PostgreSQL 12 versions. --dry-run Check if this node can be promoted, but don't carry out the promotion. --siblings-follow Have all sibling nodes (nodes formerly attached to the same upstream node as the promotion candidate) follow this node after it has been promoted. Note that a witness server, if in use, is also counted as a "sibling node" as it needs to be instructed to synchronise its metadata with the new primary. Do not provide this option when configuring &repmgrd;'s promote_command. The following parameters in repmgr.conf are relevant to the promote operation: promote_check_interval with "repmgr standby promote " promote_check_interval: interval (in seconds, default: 1 second) to wait between each check to determine whether the standby has been promoted. promote_check_timeout with "repmgr standby promote " promote_check_timeout: time (in seconds, default: 60 seconds) to wait to verify that the standby has been promoted before exiting with ERR_PROMOTION_FAIL. Following exit codes can be emitted by repmgr standby promote: SUCCESS (0) The standby was successfully promoted to primary. ERR_DB_CONN (6) &repmgr; was unable to connect to the local PostgreSQL node. PostgreSQL must be running before the node can be promoted. ERR_PROMOTION_FAIL (8) The node could not be promoted to primary for one of the following reasons: there is an existing primary node in the replication cluster the node is not a standby WAL replay is paused on the node execution of the PostgreSQL promote command failed A standby_promote event notification will be generated.