repmgr command reference
Overview of repmgr commands.
repmgr standby clone
cloning
repmgr standby clone
repmgr standby clone clones a PostgreSQL node from another
PostgreSQL node, typically the primary, but optionally from any other node in
the cluster or from Barman. It creates the recovery.conf file required
to attach the cloned node to the primary node (or another standby, if cascading replication
is in use).
repmgr standby clone does not start the standby, and after cloning
repmgr standby register must be executed to notify &repmgr; of its presence.
Handling configuration files
Note that by default, all configuration files in the source node's data
directory will be copied to the cloned node. Typically these will be
postgresql.conf, postgresql.auto.conf,
pg_hba.conf and pg_ident.conf.
These may require modification before the standby is started.
In some cases (e.g. on Debian or Ubuntu Linux installations), PostgreSQL's
configuration files are located outside of the data directory and will
not be copied by default. &repmgr; can copy these files, either to the same
location on the standby server (provided appropriate directory and file permissions
are available), or into the standby's data directory. This requires passwordless
SSH access to the primary server. Add the option --copy-external-config-files
to the repmgr standby clone command; by default files will be copied to
the same path as on the upstream server. Note that the user executing repmgr
must have write access to those directories.
To have the configuration files placed in the standby's data directory, specify
--copy-external-config-files=pgdata, but note that
any include directives in the copied files may need to be updated.
For reliable configuration file management we recommend using a
configuration management tool such as Ansible, Chef, Puppet or Salt.
Managing WAL during the cloning process
When initially cloning a standby, you will need to ensure
that all required WAL files remain available while the cloning is taking
place. To ensure this happens when using the default `pg_basebackup` method,
&repmgr; will set pg_basebackup's --xlog-method
parameter to stream,
which will ensure all WAL files generated during the cloning process are
streamed in parallel with the main backup. Note that this requires two
replication connections to be available (&repmgr; will verify sufficient
connections are available before attempting to clone, and this can be checked
before performing the clone using the --dry-run option).
To override this behaviour, in repmgr.conf set
pg_basebackup's --xlog-method
parameter to fetch:
pg_basebackup_options='--xlog-method=fetch'
and ensure that wal_keep_segments is set to an appropriately high value.
See the
pg_basebackup documentation for details.
From PostgreSQL 10, pg_basebackup's
--xlog-method parameter has been renamed to
--wal-method.
repmgr standby register
repmgr standby register
repmgr standby register adds a standby's information to
the &repmgr; metadata. This command needs to be executed to enable
promote/follow operations and to allow repmgrd to work with the node.
An existing standby can be registered using this command. Execute with the
--dry-run option to check what would happen without actually registering the
standby.
Waiting for the registration to propagate to the standby
Depending on your environment and workload, it may take some time for
the standby's node record to propagate from the primary to the standby. Some
actions (such as starting repmgrd) require that the standby's node record
is present and up-to-date to function correctly.
By providing the option --wait-sync to the
repmgr standby register command, &repmgr; will wait
until the record is synchronised before exiting. An optional timeout (in
seconds) can be added to this option (e.g. --wait-sync=60).
Registering an inactive node
Under some circumstances you may wish to register a standby which is not
yet running; this can be the case when using provisioning tools to create
a complex replication cluster. In this case, by using the -F/--force
option and providing the connection parameters to the primary server,
the standby can be registered.
Similarly, with cascading replication it may be necessary to register
a standby whose upstream node has not yet been registered - in this case,
using -F/--force will result in the creation of an inactive placeholder
record for the upstream node, which will however later need to be registered
with the -F/--force option too.
When used with repmgr standby register, care should be taken that use of the
-F/--force option does not result in an incorrectly configured cluster.
repmgr standby follow
repmgr standby follow
Attaches the standby to a new primary. 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.
This command will force a restart of the standby server, which must be
running. It can only be used to attach a standby to a new primary node.
To re-add an inactive node to the replication cluster, see
repmgr node rejoin
repmgr node rejoin
Enables a dormant (stopped) node to be rejoined to the replication cluster.
This can optionally use `pg_rewind` to re-integrate a node which has diverged
from the rest of the cluster, typically a failed primary.