Database Administrators Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for database professionals who wish to improve their database skills and learn from others in the community. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Is it possible to restore a full backup from pgbackrest without the archive files?
I tried to restore a full backup on another server but when I tried to start the instance via pg_ctl start I get an error saying "panic: could not locate a valid checkpoint"
If it is not possible then would it be possible to restore a pgbackrest backup over ssh?
PgBackrest - Version: 2.24
PostgreSQL - Version: 9.6
pgbackrest --stanza=mystanza restore --process-max 4 --delta --link-all
There is no way to restore from a postgresql binary backup without WAL. Regardless of the backup software was used: pg_basebackup, pgbackrest, barman, wal-e, wal-g or something else that uses a binary copy of the data directory. Even if case when a postgresql server was completely shut down while the backup was taken. It is mandatory to have WAL segments to start the database system.
So, if you have no backup (correct, a basebackup without WAL means no backup) and you want to start the database and damage your data - you could try to use pg_resetwal. Please read the docs carefully. After that, any anomalies in the data are expected, for example, you may find duplicate rows under a unique constraint, see rows that have already been deleted, or cannot find recently added rows.
