repmgrd configuration &repmgrd; is a daemon process which runs on each PostgreSQL node, monitoring the local node, and (unless it's the primary node) the upstream server (the primary server or with cascading replication, another standby) which it's connected to. &repmgrd; can be configured to provide failover capability in case the primary or upstream node becomes unreachable, and/or provide monitoring data to the &repmgr; metadatabase. From &repmgr; 4.4, when running on the primary node, &repmgrd; can also monitor standby disconnections/reconnections (see ). To use &repmgrd;, its associated function library must be included via postgresql.conf with: shared_preload_libraries = 'repmgr' Changing this setting requires a restart of PostgreSQL; for more details see the PostgreSQL documentation. The following configuraton options apply to &repmgrd; in all circumstances: monitor_interval_secs monitor_interval_secs The interval (in seconds, default: 2) to check the availability of the upstream node. connection_check_type connection_check_type The option connection_check_type is used to select the method &repmgrd; uses to determine whether the upstream node is available. Possible values are: ping (default) - uses PQping() to determine server availability connection - determines server availability by attempting to make a new connection to the upstream node query - determines server availability by executing an SQL statement on the node via the existing connection reconnect_attempts reconnect_attempts The number of attempts (default: 6) will be made to reconnect to an unreachable upstream node before initiating a failover. There will be an interval of reconnect_interval seconds between each reconnection attempt. reconnect_interval reconnect_interval Interval (in seconds, default: 10) between attempts to reconnect to an unreachable upstream node. The number of reconnection attempts is defined by the parameter reconnect_attempts. degraded_monitoring_timeout degraded_monitoring_timeout Interval (in seconds) after which &repmgrd; will terminate if either of the servers (local node and or upstream node) being monitored is no longer available (degraded monitoring mode). -1 (default) disables this timeout completely. See also repmgr.conf.sample for an annotated sample configuration file. The following &repmgrd; options must be set in repmgr.conf: failover promote_command follow_command Example: failover=automatic promote_command='/usr/bin/repmgr standby promote -f /etc/repmgr.conf --log-to-file' follow_command='/usr/bin/repmgr standby follow -f /etc/repmgr.conf --log-to-file --upstream-node-id=%n' Details of each option are as follows: failover failover failover can be one of automatic or manual. If failover is set to manual, &repmgrd; will not take any action if a failover situation is detected, and the node may need to be modified manually (e.g. by executing repmgr standby follow). promote_command promote_command The program or script defined in promote_command will be executed in a failover situation when &repmgrd; determines that the current node is to become the new primary node. Normally promote_command is set as &repmgr;'s repmgr standby promote command. 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. It is also possible to provide a shell script to e.g. perform user-defined tasks before promoting the current node. In this case the script must at some point execute repmgr standby promote to promote the node; if this is not done, &repmgr; metadata will not be updated and &repmgr; will no longer function reliably. Example: promote_command='/usr/bin/repmgr standby promote -f /etc/repmgr.conf --log-to-file' Note that the --log-to-file option will cause output generated by the &repmgr; command, when executed by &repmgrd;, to be logged to the same destination configured to receive log output for &repmgrd;. &repmgr; will not apply pg_bindir when executing promote_command or follow_command; these can be user-defined scripts so must always be specified with the full path. follow_command follow_command The program or script defined in follow_command will be executed in a failover situation when &repmgrd; determines that the current node is to follow the new primary node. Normally follow_command is set as &repmgr;'s repmgr standby follow command. The follow_command parameter should provide the --upstream-node-id=%n option to repmgr standby follow; the %n will be replaced by &repmgrd; with the ID of the new primary node. If this is not provided, repmgr standby follow will attempt to determine the new primary by itself, but if the original primary comes back online after the new primary is promoted, there is a risk that repmgr standby follow will result in the node continuing to follow the original primary. It is also possible to provide a shell script to e.g. perform user-defined tasks before promoting the current node. In this case the script must at some point execute repmgr standby follow to promote the node; if this is not done, &repmgr; metadata will not be updated and &repmgr; will no longer function reliably. Example: follow_command='/usr/bin/repmgr standby follow -f /etc/repmgr.conf --log-to-file --upstream-node-id=%n' Note that the --log-to-file option will cause output generated by the &repmgr; command, when executed by &repmgrd;, to be logged to the same destination configured to receive log output for &repmgrd;. &repmgr; will not apply pg_bindir when executing promote_command or follow_command; these can be user-defined scripts so must always be specified with the full path. The following configuraton options can be use to fine-tune automatic failover: priority priority Indicates a preferred priority (default: 100) for promoting nodes; a value of zero prevents the node being promoted to primary. Note that the priority setting is only applied if two or more nodes are determined as promotion candidates; in that case the node with the higher priority is selected. failover_validation_command failover_validation_command User-defined script to execute for an external mechanism to validate the failover decision made by &repmgrd;. This option must be identically configured on all nodes. One or both of the following parameter placeholders should be provided, which will be replaced by repmgrd with the appropriate value: %n: node ID %a: node name See also: Failover validation. primary_visibility_consensus primary_visibility_consensus If true, only continue with failover if no standbys (or the witness server, if present) have seen the primary node recently. This option must be identically configured on all nodes. standby_disconnect_on_failover standby_disconnect_on_failover In a failover situation, disconnect the local node's WAL receiver. This option is available from PostgreSQL 9.5 and later. This option must be identically configured on all nodes. Additionally the &repmgr; user must be a superuser for this option. &repmgrd; will refuse to start if this option is set but either of these prerequisites is not met. See also: Standby disconnection on failover. The following options can be used to further fine-tune failover behaviour. In practice it's unlikely these will need to be changed from their default values, but are available as configuration options should the need arise. election_rerun_interval election_rerun_interval If failover_validation_command is set, and the command returns an error, pause the specified amount of seconds (default: 15) before rerunning the election. sibling_nodes_disconnect_timeout sibling_nodes_disconnect_timeout If standby_disconnect_on_failover is true, the maximum length of time (in seconds, default: 30) to wait for other standbys to confirm they have disconnected their WAL receivers. fencing using repmgrd and pgbouncer to fence a failed primary node PgBouncer using repmgrd and pgbouncer to fence a failed primary node For further details and a reference implementation, see the separate document Fencing a failed master node with repmgrd and PgBouncer. repmgrd PostgreSQL service configuration If using automatic failover, currently &repmgrd; will need to execute repmgr standby follow to restart PostgreSQL on standbys to have them follow a new primary. To ensure this happens smoothly, it's essential to provide the appropriate system/service restart command appropriate to your operating system via service_restart_command in repmgr.conf. If you don't do this, &repmgrd; will default to using pg_ctl, which can result in unexpected problems, particularly on systemd-based systems. For more details, see . repmgrd repmgrd service configuration If you are intending to use the repmgr daemon start and repmgr daemon stop commands, the following parameters must be set in repmgr.conf: repmgrd_service_start_command repmgrd_service_stop_command Example (for &repmgr; with PostgreSQL 12 on CentOS 7): repmgrd_service_start_command='sudo systemctl repmgr12 start' repmgrd_service_stop_command='sudo systemctl repmgr12 stop' For more details see the reference page for each command. repmgrd monitoring configuration To enable monitoring, set: monitoring_history=yes in repmgr.conf. Monitoring data is written at the interval defined by the option monitor_interval_secs (see above). For more details on monitoring, see . For information on monitoring standby disconnections, see . repmgrd applying configuration changes To apply configuration file changes to a running &repmgrd; daemon, execute the operating system's &repmgrd; service reload command (see for examples), or for instances which were manually started, execute kill -HUP, e.g. kill -HUP `cat /tmp/repmgrd.pid`. Check the &repmgrd; log to see what changes were applied, or if any issues were encountered when reloading the configuration. Note that only the following subset of configuration file parameters can be changed on a running &repmgrd; daemon: async_query_timeout child_nodes_check_interval child_nodes_connected_include_witness child_nodes_connected_min_count child_nodes_disconnect_command child_nodes_disconnect_min_count child_nodes_disconnect_timeout connection_check_type conninfo degraded_monitoring_timeout event_notification_command event_notifications failover_validation_command failover follow_command log_facility log_file log_level log_status_interval monitor_interval_secs monitoring_history primary_notification_timeout primary_visibility_consensus promote_command reconnect_attempts reconnect_interval retry_promote_interval_secs repmgrd_standby_startup_timeout sibling_nodes_disconnect_timeout standby_disconnect_on_failover The following set of configuration file parameters must be updated via repmgr standby register --force, as they require changes to the repmgr.nodes table so they are visible to all nodes in the replication cluster: node_id node_name data_directory location priority After executing repmgr standby register --force, &repmgrd; must be restarted for the changes to take effect. repmgrd starting and stopping If installed from a package, the &repmgrd; can be started via the operating system's service command, e.g. in systemd using systemctl. See appendix for details of service commands for different distributions. The commands repmgr daemon start and repmgr daemon stop can be used as convenience wrappers to start and stop &repmgrd; on the local node. repmgr daemon start and repmgr daemon stop require that the appropriate start/stop commands are configured as repmgrd_service_start_command and repmgrd_service_stop_command in repmgr.conf. &repmgrd; can be started manually like this: repmgrd -f /etc/repmgr.conf --pid-file /tmp/repmgrd.pid and stopped with kill `cat /tmp/repmgrd.pid`. Adjust paths as appropriate. repmgrd PID file PID file repmgrd &repmgrd; will generate a PID file by default. This is a behaviour change from previous versions (earlier than 4.1), where the PID file had to be explicitly specified with the command line parameter --pid-file. The PID file can be specified in repmgr.conf with the configuration parameter repmgrd_pid_file. It can also be specified on the command line (as in previous versions) with the command line parameter --pid-file. Note this will override any value set in repmgr.conf with repmgrd_pid_file. --pid-file may be deprecated in future releases. If a PID file location was specified by the package maintainer, &repmgrd; will use that. This only applies if &repmgr; was installed from a package and the package maintainer has specified the PID file location. If none of the above apply, &repmgrd; will create a PID file in the operating system's temporary directory (as setermined by the environment variable TMPDIR, or if that is not set, will use /tmp). To prevent a PID file being generated at all, provide the command line option --no-pid-file. To see which PID file &repmgrd; would use, execute &repmgrd; with the option --show-pid-file. &repmgrd; will not start if this option is provided. Note that the value shown is the file &repmgrd; would use next time it starts, and is not necessarily the PID file currently in use. repmgrd Debian/Ubuntu and daemon configuration Debian/Ubuntu repmgrd daemon configuration If &repmgr; was installed from Debian/Ubuntu packages, additional configuration is required before &repmgrd; is started as a daemon. This is done via the file /etc/default/repmgrd, which by default looks like this: # default settings for repmgrd. This file is source by /bin/sh from # /etc/init.d/repmgrd # disable repmgrd by default so it won't get started upon installation # valid values: yes/no REPMGRD_ENABLED=no # configuration file (required) #REPMGRD_CONF="/path/to/repmgr.conf" # additional options REPMGRD_OPTS="--daemonize=false" # user to run repmgrd as #REPMGRD_USER=postgres # repmgrd binary #REPMGRD_BIN=/usr/bin/repmgrd # pid file #REPMGRD_PIDFILE=/var/run/repmgrd.pid Set REPMGRD_ENABLED to yes, and REPMGRD_CONF to the repmgr.conf file you are using. See for details of the Debian/Ubuntu packages and typical file locations (including repmgr.conf). From &repmgrd; 4.1, ensure REPMGRD_OPTS includes --daemonize=false, as daemonization is handled by the service command. If using systemd, you may need to execute systemctl daemon-reload. Also, if you attempted to start &repmgrd; using systemctl start repmgrd, you'll need to execute systemctl stop repmgrd. Because that's how systemd rolls. In addition to the &repmgr; configuration settings, parameters in the conninfo string influence how &repmgr; makes a network connection to PostgreSQL. In particular, if another server in the replication cluster is unreachable at network level, system network settings will influence the length of time it takes to determine that the connection is not possible. In particular explicitly setting a parameter for connect_timeout should be considered; the effective minimum value of 2 (seconds) will ensure that a connection failure at network level is reported as soon as possible, otherwise depending on the system settings (e.g. tcp_syn_retries in Linux) a delay of a minute or more is possible. For further details on conninfo network connection parameters, see the PostgreSQL documentation. log rotation repmgrd repmgrd log rotation To ensure the current &repmgrd; logfile (specified in repmgr.conf with the parameter log_file) does not grow indefinitely, configure your system's logrotate to regularly rotate it. Sample configuration to rotate logfiles weekly with retention for up to 52 weeks and rotation forced if a file grows beyond 100Mb: /var/log/repmgr/repmgrd.log { missingok compress rotate 52 maxsize 100M weekly create 0600 postgres postgres postrotate /usr/bin/killall -HUP repmgrd endscript }