Promotes a standby to a primary if the current primary has failed. This command requires a valid repmgr.conf file for the standby, either specified explicitly with -f/--config-file or located in a default location; no additional arguments are required.
If the standby promotion succeeds, the server will not need to be restarted. However any other standbys will need to follow the new server, by using repmgr standby follow; if repmgrd is active, it will handle this automatically.
Note that repmgr will wait for up to promote_check_timeout seconds (default: 60 seconds) to verify that the standby has been promoted, and will check the promotion every promote_check_interval seconds (default: 1 second). Both values can be defined in repmgr.conf.
Note: If WAL replay is paused on the standby, and not all WAL files on the standby have been replayed, repmgr will not attempt to promote it.
This is because if WAL replay is paused, PostgreSQL itself will not react to a promote command until WAL replay is resumed and all pending WAL has been replayed. This means attempting to promote PostgreSQL in this state will leave PostgreSQL in a condition where the promotion may occur at a unpredictable point in the future.
Note that if the standby is in archive recovery, repmgr will not be able to determine if more WAL is pending replay, and will abort the promotion attempt if WAL replay is paused.
$ repmgr -f /etc/repmgr.conf standby promote
NOTICE: promoting standby to primary
DETAIL: promoting server "node2" (ID: 2) using "pg_ctl -l /var/log/postgres/startup.log -w -D '/var/lib/postgres/data' promote"
server promoting
DEBUG: setting node 2 as primary and marking existing primary as failed
NOTICE: STANDBY PROMOTE successful
DETAIL: server "node2" (ID: 2) was successfully promoted to primary
The following parameters in repmgr.conf are relevant to the promote operation:
promote_check_interval: interval (in seconds, default: 1 second) to wait between each check to determine whether the standby has been promoted.
promote_check_timeout: time (in seconds, default: 60 seconds) to wait to verify that the standby has been promoted before exiting with ERR_PROMOTION_FAIL.
Following exit codes can be emitted by repmgr standby promote:
The standby was successfully promoted to primary.
repmgr was unable to connect to the local PostgreSQL node.
PostgreSQL must be running before the node can be promoted.
The node could not be promoted to primary for one of the following reasons: