BARMAN-WAL-RESTORE(1)

💅 BARMAN-WAL-RESTORE 💅 (section 1, bestie)

okay so this is the Barman manual page for the barman-wal-restore command — the Barman-cli one. pull up a chair, we're doing this. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

barman-wal-restore — Barman-cli Commands 🎀

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🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

barman-wal-restore
    [ { -h | --help } ]
    [ { -V | --version } ]
    [ { -U | --user } USER ]
    [ --port PORT ]
    [ { -s | --sleep } SECONDS ]
    [ { -p | --parallel } JOBS ]
    [ --spool-dir SPOOL_DIR ]
    [ { -P | --partial } ]
    [ { { -z | --gzip } | { -j | --bzip2 } | --keep-compression } ]
    [ { -c | --config } CONFIG ]
    [ { -t | --test } ]
    BARMAN_HOST SERVER_NAME WAL_NAME WAL_DEST

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

This script is literally a restore_command for Postgres servers, and its whole job is grabbing WAL files through Barman's get-wal feature. 🦋 It opens up an SSH connection to the Barman host and makes it so easy to slot Barman into your Postgres clusters — which is giving business continuity, no cap. 💖

And the exit statuses, bestie, are these:

• 0 for SUCCESS. 🎉
• 1 for remote get-wal command FAILURE, most likely because the WAL you asked for could not be found. 😭
• 2 for ssh connection FAILURE. 💀
• Any other non-zero value for FAILURE.

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🎀 PARAMETERS 🎀

🌟 the positional besties

• SERVER_NAME — the server name that's configured in Barman for the Postgres server you're pulling the WAL file from.
• BARMAN_HOST — the host of the Barman server. 💻
• WAL_NAME — the value of the %f keyword (per restore_command).
• WAL_NAME... no wait, we already did that one. 🙈 It's WAL_DEST — the value of the %p keyword (per restore_command).

✨ the options, one by one, all of them, yes all of them ✨

• -h, --help — show a help message and dip. 👋
• -V, --version — show the program's version number and dip. 🔢
• -U, --user — set the user for the SSH connection to the Barman server. Defaults to barman. 👑
• --port — set the port used for the SSH connection to the Barman server. 🚪
• -s, --sleep — pause for SECONDS after a failed get-wal request. Defaults to 0 — no wait at all. 😴
• -p, --parallel — how many WAL files to fetch in parallel. Default is 0 (disabled). When you set it to anything greater than 1, it fetches the WAL file you asked for plus the next N - 1 files at the same time. Those extra files get staged in a local spool directory (peep --spool-dir) so later restore requests can be served immediately from local storage. so efficient, we love her. 🔥
• --spool-dir — the directory used for staging those extra WALs that get fetched when you're using --parallel. Default is /var/tmp/walrestore. 📁
• -P, --partial — include partial WAL files (.partial) in the retrieval. 🧩
• -z, --gzip — transfer WAL files compressed with gzip. 🗜️
• -j, --bzip2 — transfer WAL files compressed with bzip2. 🗜️
• --keep-compression — if you specify this, compressed files get transferred as-is and decompressed on arrival on the client side. 📦
• -c, --config — specify the configuration file on the Barman server. ⚙️
• -t, --test — test the connection and the configuration of the specified Postgres server in Barman, to make sure it's ready to receive WAL files. This option ignores the mandatory arguments WAL_NAME and WAL_DEST. ✅

⚠️ Warning ⚠️

bestie, listen. -z / --gzip and -j / --bzip2 are deprecated and are going to be removed in the future. 😭 For WAL compression, please make sure to enable it directly on the Barman server via the compression configuration option. do it there, not here. fr fr. 💅

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💜 Author 💜

EnterpriseDB

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🩷 Copyright 🩷

© Copyright EnterpriseDB UK Limited 2011-2026

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and that's the whole page, babes. 🌈 this was version 3.20, dated Sep 29, 2026 — shoutout to the Barman crew, mwah. 💖✨🎀🦋🌸🫶👑