Installation#

Official packages for Barman are distributed by EnterpriseDB through repositories listed on the Barman downloads page .

These packages use the default python3 version provided by the target operating system. If an alternative python3 version is required then you will need to install Barman from source.

Important

The recommended way to install Barman is by using the available packages for your GNU/Linux distribution.

Installation on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and RHEL-based systems using RPM packages#

Barman can be installed using RPM packages on RHEL8 and RHEL7 systems and the identical versions of RHEL derivatives AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux, and Rocky Linux. It is required to install the Extra Packages Enterprise Linux (EPEL) repository and the PostgreSQL Global Development Group RPM repository beforehand.

Official RPM packages for Barman are distributed by EnterpriseDB via Yum through the public RPM repository , by following the instructions you find on that website.

Then, as root simply type:

yum install barman

In addition to the Barman packages available in the EDB and PGDG repositories, Barman RPMs published by the Fedora project can be found in EPEL. These RPMs are not maintained by the Barman developers and use a different configuration layout to the packages available in the PGDG and EDB repositories:

  • EDB and PGDG packages use /etc/barman.conf as the main configuration file and /etc/barman.d for additional configuration files.

  • The Fedora packages use /etc/barman/barman.conf as the main configuration file and /etc/barman/conf.d for additional configuration files.

The difference in configuration file layout means that upgrades between the EPEL and non-EPEL Barman packages can break existing Barman installations until configuration files are manually updated. We therefore recommend that you use a single source repository for Barman packages. This can be achieved by adding the following line to the definition of the repositories from which you do not want to obtain Barman packages:

exclude=barman* python*-barman

Specifically:

  • To use only Barman packages from the EDB repositories, add the exclude directive from above to repository definitions in /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo and /etc/yum.repos.d/pgdg-*.repo .

  • To use only Barman packages from the PGDG repositories, add the exclude directive from above to repository definitions in /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo and /etc/yum.repos.d/enterprisedb*.repo .

  • To use only Barman packages from the EPEL repositories, add the exclude directive from above to repository definitions in /etc/yum.repos.d/pgdg-*.repo and /etc/yum.repos.d/enterprisedb*.repo .

Installation on Debian/Ubuntu using packages#

Barman can be installed on Debian and Ubuntu Linux systems using packages.

It is directly available in the official repository for Debian and Ubuntu, however, these repositories might not contain the latest available version. If you want to have the latest version of Barman, the recommended method is to install both these repositories:

Note

Thanks to the direct involvement of Barman developers in the PostgreSQL Community APT repository project, you will always have access to the most updated versions of Barman.

Installing Barman is as easy. As root user simply type:

apt-get install barman

Installation on SLES using packages#

Barman can be installed on SLES systems using packages available in the

PGDG SLES repositories . Install the necessary repository by following the

instructions available on the PGDG site .

Supported SLES version: SLES 15 SP3.

Once the necessary repositories have been installed you can install Barman as the root user:

zypper install barman

Installation from sources#

Warning

Manual installation of Barman from sources should only be performed by expert GNU/Linux users. Installing Barman this way requires system administration activities such as dependencies management, barman user creation, configuration of the barman.conf file, cron setup for the barman cron command, log management, and so on.

Create a system user called barman on the backup server. As barman user, download the sources and uncompress them.

For a system-wide installation, type:

barman@backup$ ./setup.py build
# run this command with root privileges or through sudo
barman@backup# ./setup.py install

For a local installation, type:

barman@backup$ ./setup.py install --user
The barman application will be installed in your user directory (

make sure that your `PATH environment variable is set properly <Barman Manual>` ).

Barman is also available on the Python Package Index (PyPI) and can be installed through pip .

PostgreSQL client/server binaries#

The following Barman features depend on PostgreSQL binaries:

  • Streaming backup vs rsync/SSH with backup_method = postgres (requires pg_basebackup )

  • Streaming WAL archiving with streaming_archiver = on (requires pg_receivewal or pg_receivexlog )

  • Verifying backups with barman verify-backup (requires pg_verifybackup )

Depending on the target OS these binaries are installed with either the PostgreSQL client or server packages:

  • On RedHat/CentOS and SLES: * The pg_basebackup and pg_receivewal /pg_receivexlog binaries are installed with the PostgreSQL client packages. * The pg_verifybackup binary is installed with the PostgreSQL server packages. * All binaries are installed in /usr/pgsql-${PG_MAJOR_VERSION}/bin .

  • On Debian/Ubuntu: * All binaries are installed with the PostgreSQL client packages. * The binaries are installed in /usr/lib/postgresql/${PG_MAJOR_VERSION}/bin .

You must ensure that either:

  1. The Barman user has the bin directory for the appropriate PG_MAJOR_VERSION on its path, or:

  2. The path_prefix option is set in the Barman configuration for each server and points to the bin directory for the appropriate PG_MAJOR_VERSION .

The (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/app-psql.html) [psql] program is recommended in addition to the above binaries. While Barman does not use it directly the documentation provides examples of how it can be used to verify PostgreSQL connections are working as intended. The psql binary can be found in the PostgreSQL client packages.

Third party PostgreSQL variants#

If you are using Barman for the backup and recovery of third-party PostgreSQL variants then you will need to check whether the PGDG client/server binaries described above are compatible with your variant. If they are incompatible then you will need to install compatible alternatives from appropriate packages.

Upgrading Barman#

Barman follows the trunk-based development paradigm, and as such there is only one stable version, the latest. After every commit, Barman goes through thousands of automated tests for each supported PostgreSQL version and on each supported Linux distribution.

Also, every version is back compatible with previous ones. Therefore, upgrading Barman normally requires a simple update of packages using yum update or apt update .

There have been, however, the following exceptions in our development history, which required some small changes to the configuration.

Upgrading to Barman 3.0.0#

Default backup approach for Rsync backups is now concurrent#

Barman will now use concurrent backups if neither concurrent_backup nor exclusive_backup are specified in backup_options . This differs from previous Barman versions where the default was to use exclusive backup.

If you require exclusive backups you will now need to add exclusive_backup to backup_options in the Barman configuration.

Note that exclusive backups are not supported at all when running against PostgreSQL 15.

Metadata changes#

A new field named compression will be added to the metadata stored in the backup.info file for all backups taken with version 3.0.0. This is used when recovering from backups taken using the built-in compression functionality of pg_basebackup .

The presence of this field means that earlier versions of Barman are not able to read backups taken with Barman 3.0.0. This means that if you downgrade from Barman 3.0.0 to an earlier version you will have to either manually remove any backups taken with 3.0.0 or edit the backup.info file of each backup to remove the compression field.

The same metadata change affects (EnterpriseDB/pg-backup-api) [pg-backup-api] so if you are using pg-backup-api you will need to update it to version 0.2.0.

Upgrading from Barman 2.10#

If you are using barman-cloud-wal-archive or barman-cloud-backup you need to be aware that from version 2.11 all cloud utilities have been moved into the new barman-cli-cloud package. Therefore, you need to ensure that the barman-cli-cloud package is properly installed as part of the upgrade to the latest version. If you are not using the above tools, you can upgrade to the latest version as usual.

Upgrading from Barman 2.X (prior to 2.8)#

Before upgrading from a version of Barman 2.7 or older users of rsync backup method on a primary server should explicitly set backup_options to either concurrent_backup (recommended for PostgreSQL 9.6 or higher) or exclusive_backup (current default), otherwise Barman emits a warning every time it runs.

Upgrading from Barman 1.X#

If your Barman installation is 1.X, you need to explicitly configure the archiving strategy. Before, the file based archiver, controlled by archiver , was enabled by default.

Before you upgrade your Barman installation to the latest version, make sure you add the following line either globally or for any server that requires it:

archiver = on

Additionally, for a few releases, Barman will transparently set archiver = on with any server that has not explicitly set an archiving strategy and emit a warning.