PG_AUTOCTL DISABLE MONITOR(1)

💖 PG_AUTOCTL DISABLE MONITOR(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to pg_autoctl disable monitor — the pg_autoctl manual page for turning the monitor off for a node. yes, that's the whole vibe. let's go ✨

---

🌸 NAME 🌸

pg_autoctl disable monitor — pg_autoctl disable monitor

pg_autoctl disable monitor — disable the monitor for this node

so like, it's the command, and it does the thing, and the thing is turning off the monitor for this node. iconic, no notes 💅

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

okay so the tea is: you can totally disable the pg_auto_failover monitor and then enable it again, online, on a pg_autoctl Postgres node that's already running. no downtime drama, no restarting anything 🎀

and when is this actually useful?? the main use-cases are when the monitor node has to be replaced — either after a full crash of the old monitor node, or when you're migrating to a brand new monitor node (think: hardware replacement, region or zone migration, etc). glow-up for your monitor, fr fr 🦋

usage: pg_autoctl disable monitor  [ --pgdata --force ]

--pgdata      path to data directory
--force       force unregistering from the monitor

---

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --pgdata — where's the Postgres node you're managing locally? this is it. it defaults to the environment variable PGDATA. oh and pssst: use --monitor if you wanna connect to a monitor from literally anywhere, instead of using the monitor URI that a local Postgres node managed with pg_autoctl would use. flexibility, we love her 👑
• --force — okay so --force is covering two situations, and here they are:
  1. by default, the command expects to be able to connect to the current monitor. so when the current known monitor in the setup isn't running anymore, use --force to skip that step. no monitor? no problem 💀
  2. when pg_autoctl could connect to the monitor and the node is found there, that's normally an error that stops you from disabling the monitor. using --force lets the command drop the node from the monitor and then keep going with disabling the monitor. breaking up with the monitor, but politely 🫶

---

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• PGDATA — Postgres directory location. can be used instead of the --pgdata option. same energy, fewer flags ✨
• PG_AUTOCTL_MONITOR — Postgres URI to connect to the monitor node. can be used instead of the --monitor option 💜
• XDG_CONFIG_HOME — the pg_autoctl command stores its configuration files in the standard place XDG_CONFIG_HOME. see the XDG Base Directory Specification 📁
• XDG_DATA_HOME — the pg_autoctl command stores its internal states files in the standard place XDG_DATA_HOME, which defaults to ~/.local/share. see the XDG Base Directory Specification 📁✨

---

🎀 EXAMPLES 🎀

first, let's see what the state of the world is:

$ pg_autoctl show state
    Name |  Node |      Host:Port |       LSN |   Connection |       Current State |      Assigned State
------+-------+----------------+-----------+--------------+---------------------+--------------------
node1 |     1 | localhost:5501 | 0/4000148 |   read-write |             primary |             primary
node2 |     2 | localhost:5502 | 0/4000148 |    read-only |           secondary |           secondary
node3 |     3 | localhost:5503 | 0/4000148 |    read-only |           secondary |           secondary

okay now watch what happens when we try to disable the monitor on node3 without --force:

$ pg_autoctl disable monitor --pgdata node3
12:41:21 43039 INFO  Found node 3 "node3" (localhost:5503) on the monitor
12:41:21 43039 FATAL Use --force to remove the node from the monitor

yeahhh, FATAL. it found the node and said "bestie, you need --force for that." 😭

so let's do it with --force:

$ pg_autoctl disable monitor --pgdata node3 --force
12:41:32 43219 INFO  Removing node 3 "node3" (localhost:5503) from monitor

and now the state, which is giving... node3 is gone:

$ pg_autoctl show state
 Name |  Node |      Host:Port |       LSN |   Connection |       Current State |      Assigned State
------+-------+----------------+-----------+--------------+---------------------+--------------------
node1 |     1 | localhost:5501 | 0/4000760 |   read-write |             primary |             primary
node2 |     2 | localhost:5502 | 0/4000760 |    read-only |           secondary |           secondary

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Microsoft

---

💖 COPYRIGHT 💖

Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🫶 this was pg_auto_failover version 2.2, dated Apr 07, 2025, straight from the PG_AUTOCTL DISABLE MONITOR(1) manual. go forth and disable that monitor responsibly 💅✨🌸