Point-in-time recovery (PITR) via continuous WAL archiving.

PITR archives PostgreSQL write-ahead log segments so that any second within the retention window can be used as a restore target. A scheduled base backup (pg_basebackup) combined with a stream of WAL segments lets you recover to any point in the past, not just the last full backup.

nself pitr enable       --to <destination> [flags]
nself pitr disable
nself pitr status
nself pitr base-backup  [--encrypt-recipient <age-pubkey>]
nself pitr restore      --to <timestamp-or-relative>

Configure PostgreSQL for continuous WAL archiving and write the PITR config snippet.

nself pitr enable --to s3://my-bucket/pitr
nself pitr enable --to s3://my-bucket/pitr --encrypt-recipient age1abc... --retention-days 14

Writes .nself/pitr/postgresql.conf.d/pitr.conf. Mount this file into the PostgreSQL container to activate WAL archiving. Sets wal_level = logical (satisfies both PITR and CDC logical replication, no separate setting needed).

Flags:

Remove the PITR config snippet. WAL archiving stops on the next container restart.

nself pitr disable

Show the current retention window, WAL segment count, and the latest archived WAL timestamp.

nself pitr status

Output:

Base backups:    3
WAL segments:    1440
Oldest restore:  2026-04-15T02:00:00Z
Latest WAL:      2026-04-22T15:28:34Z

Take a manual base backup right now using pg_basebackup. Useful before maintenance windows or major schema changes.

nself pitr base-backup
nself pitr base-backup --encrypt-recipient age1abc...

The backup is recorded in ~/.nself/wal-catalog.json.

Flags:

Restore the PostgreSQL database to a specific point in time.

nself pitr restore --to 2026-04-22T15:30:00Z
nself pitr restore --to "30 minutes ago"
nself pitr restore --to "2 hours ago"

Steps performed:

1. Locate the latest base backup before the target time in ~/.nself/wal-catalog.json.
2. Fetch and (if encrypted) decrypt the base backup.
3. Write recovery_target_time configuration to .nself/pitr/recovery.conf.
4. Stop the PostgreSQL container, apply recovery config, restart.
5. Poll until pg_is_in_recovery() returns false (up to 5 minutes).

Flags:

Supported time formats:

PITR behaviour is controlled by environment variables in .env / .env.prod:

~/.nself/wal-catalog.json tracks base backup timestamps and WAL segment metadata. The restore command uses this catalog to find the right base backup and segments for a given target time. It is updated automatically by nself pitr base-backup and by the WAL archive command.

When --encrypt-recipient is specified, WAL segments and base backups are encrypted with age before being written to the destination. To restore, provide the corresponding identity file:

nself pitr restore --to "30 minutes ago" --identity ~/.config/nself/myproject-age.key

Generate a keypair with nself backup init-key.

nself db pitr is a lower-level command that inspects the live Postgres archive_mode and pg_stat_archiver settings. nself pitr is the higher-level PITR workflow: it manages the WAL catalog, base backups, retention, and full restore orchestration.

• cmd-backup, full and metadata backups
• cmd-restore, restore from a pg_dump backup
• Point-in-Time Recovery Guide

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