PgBackRest Issues

This page covers backup and recovery issues.

Initial Backup Fails

Symptom: The stanza-create command or first full backup fails.

Solution: Verify that Postgres is running and test the backup configuration:

sudo -u postgres pgbackrest --stanza=pgedge-demo-1 check
sudo -u postgres pgbackrest --stanza=pgedge-demo-1 backup --type=full

Review the PgBackRest logs for details:

sudo tail -f /var/log/pgbackrest/*.log

Symptom: PgBackRest cannot connect to the backup server over SSH.

Solution: Test SSH connectivity as the postgres user:

sudo -u postgres ssh backup-server

Verify that the public key in ~postgres/.ssh/id_rsa.pub on the Postgres node appears in the authorized_keys file on the backup server.

Symptom: PgBackRest cannot connect to the S3 backup repository.

Solution: Verify the S3 credentials and bucket access:

aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name --region us-west-2

Confirm network connectivity to the S3 endpoint and that the IAM policy grants the required permissions.

Symptom: The backup user fails to authenticate to Postgres.

Solution: Confirm that the backup user exists and has the correct privileges:

sudo -u postgres psql -c "\du backrest"

Verify that pg_hba.conf includes an entry for the backup user and that the backup_password in the inventory matches the user's password.