Stefan Fercot🔔 New blog post on a #pgBackRest feature preview: simplifying manual expiration of oldest backups.
🔎 The new expire --oldest option makes it much easier to expire the oldest eligible full backup without adjusting retention settings. This addresses a long-standing usability gap when disk space is tight and removes the need for temporary retention changes or scripting.
👉 Full example and details: https://pgstef.github.io/2025/12/17/pgbackrest_preview_expire_oldest.html
pgBackRest preview - simplifying manual expiration of oldest backups
A useful new feature was introduced on 11 December 2025: Allow expiration of the oldest full backup regardless of current retention. Details are available in commit bf2b276. Before this change, it was awkward to expire only the oldest full backup while leaving the existing retention settings untouched. Users had to temporarily adjust retention (or write a script) to achieve the same result. Expiring the oldest full backup is particularly helpful when your backup repository is running low on disk space. Let’s see how this works in practice with a simple example.