Release notes for CloudNativePG 1.20

History of user-visible changes in the 1.20 minor release of CloudNativePG.

For a complete list of changes, please refer to the commits on the release branch in GitHub.

Version 1.20.6

Release date: Feb 2, 2024

Enhancements:

• Tailor ephemeral volume storage in a Postgres cluster using a claim template through the ephemeralVolumeSource option (#3678)
• Introduce the pgadmin4 command in the cnpg plugin for kubectl, providing a straightforward method to demonstrate connecting to a given database cluster and navigate its content in a local environment such as kind - for evaluation purposes only (#3701)
• Allow customization of PostgreSQL's ident map file via the .spec.postgresql.pg_ident stanza, through a list of user name maps (#3534)

Fixes:

• Prevent an unrecoverable issue with pg_rewind failing due to postgresql.auto.conf being read-only on clusters where the ALTER SYSTEM SQL command is disabled - the default (#3728)
• Reduce the risk of disk space shortage when using the import facility of the initdb bootstrap method, by disabling the durability settings in the PostgreSQL instance for the duration of the import process (#3743)
• Avoid pod restart due to erroneous resource quantity comparisons, e.g. "1 != 1000m" (#3706)
• Properly escape reserved characters in pgpass connection fields (#3713)
• Prevent systematic rollout of pods due to considering zero and nil different values in .spec.projectedVolumeTemplate.sources (#3647)

Version 1.20.5

Release date: Dec 21, 2023

Security:

• By default, TLSv1.3 is now enforced on all PostgreSQL 12 or higher installations. Additionally, users can configure the ssl_ciphers, ssl_min_protocol_version, and ssl_max_protocol_version GUCs (#3408).
• Integration of Docker image scanning with Dockle and Snyk to enhance security measures (#3300).

Enhancements:

• Improved reconciliation of external clusters (#3533).
• Introduction of the ability to enable/disable the ALTER SYSTEM command (#3535).
• Support for Prometheus' dynamic relabeling through the podMonitorMetricRelabelings and podMonitorRelabelings options in the .spec.monitoring stanza of the Cluster and Pooler resources (#3075).
• Elimination of the use of the PGPASSFILE environment variable when establishing a network connection to PostgreSQL (#3522).
• Improved cnpg report plugin command by collecting a cluster's PVCs (#3357).
• Enhancement of the cnpg status plugin command, providing information about managed roles, including alerts (#3310).
• Connection pooler:
  • Scaling down instances of a Pooler resource to 0 is now possible (#3517).
  • Addition of the cnpg.io/podRole label with a value of 'pooler' to every pooler deployment, differentiating them from instance pods (#3396).

Fixes:

• Reconciliation of metadata, annotations, and labels of PodDisruptionBudget resources (#3312 and #3434).
• Reconciliation of the metadata of the managed credential secrets (#3316).
• Resolution of a bug in the backup snapshot code where an error reading the body would be handled as an overall error, leaving the backup process indefinitely stuck (#3321).
• Implicit setting of online backup with the cnpg backup plugin command when either immediate-checkpoint or wait-for-archive options are requested (#3449).
• Disabling of wal_sender_timeout when joining through pg_basebackup (#3586)
• Reloading of secrets used by external clusters (#3565)
• Connection pooler:
  • Ensuring the controller watches all secrets owned by a Pooler resource (#3428).
  • Reconciliation of RoleBinding for Pooler resources (#3391).
  • Reconciliation of imagePullSecret for Pooler resources (#3389).
  • Reconciliation of the service of a Pooler and addition of the required labels (#3349).
  • Extension of Pooler labels to the deployment as well, not just the pods (#3350).

Changes:

• Default operand image set to PostgreSQL 16.1 (#3270).

Version 1.20.4

Release date: Nov 3, 2023

Enhancements:

• Enhance the status command of the cnpg plugin for kubectl with progress information on active streaming base backups (#3101)
• Allow the configuration of max_prepared_statements with the pgBouncer Pooler resource (#3174)

Fixes:

• Suspend WAL archiving during a switchover and resume it when it is completed (#3227)
• Ensure that the instance manager always uses synchronous_commit = local when managing the PostgreSQL cluster (#3143)
• Custom certificates for streaming replication user through .spec.certificates.replicationTLSSecret are now working (#3209)
• Set the cnpg.io/cluster label to the Pooler pods (#3153)

Changes:

• Stop using the postgresql.auto.conf file inside PGDATA to control Postgres replication settings, and replace it with a file named override.conf (#2812)

Technical enhancements:

• Use extended query protocol for PostgreSQL in the instance manager (#3152)

Version 1.20.3

Release date: Oct 11, 2023

Important Changes:

• Change the default value of stopDelay to 1800 seconds instead of 30 seconds (#2848)
• Introduce a new parameter, called smartShutdownTimeout, to control the window of time reserved for the smart shutdown of Postgres to complete; the general formula to compute the overall timeout to stop Postgres is max(stopDelay - smartShutdownTimeout, 30) (#2848)
• Change the default value of startDelay to 3600, instead of 30 seconds (#2847)
• Replace the livenessProbe initial delay with a more proper Kubernetes startup probe to deal with the start of a Postgres server (#2847)
• Change the default value of switchoverDelay to 3600 seconds instead of 40000000 seconds (#2846)
• Stop supporting the postgresql label - replaced by cnpg.io/cluster in 1.18 (#2744)

Security:

• Add a default seccompProfile to the operator deployment (#2926)

Enhancements:

• Introduce the cnpg.io/coredumpFilter annotation to control the content of a core dump generated in the unlikely event of a PostgreSQL crash, by default set to exclude shared memory segments from the dump (#2733)
• Allow to configure ephemeral-storage limits for the shared memory and temporary data ephemeral volumes (#2830)
• Validate resource limits and requests through the webhook (#2663)
• Ensure that PostgreSQL's shared_buffers are coherent with the pods' allocated memory resources (#2840)
• Add uri and jdbc-uri fields in the credential secrets to facilitate developers when connecting their applications to the database (#2186)
• Add a new phase Waiting for the instances to become active for finer control of a cluster's state waiting for the replicas to be ready (#2612)
• Improve detection of Pod rollout conditions through the podSpec annotation (#2243)
• Add primary timestamp and uptime to the kubectl plugin’s status command (#2953)

Fixes:

• Ensure that the primary instance is always recreated first by prioritizing ready PVCs with a primary role (#2544)
• Honor the cnpg.io/skipEmptyWalArchiveCheck annotation during recovery to bypass the check for an empty WAL archive (#2731)
• Prevent a cluster from being stuck when the PostgreSQL server is down but the pod is up on the primary (#2966)
• Avoid treating the designated primary in a replica cluster as a regular HA replica when replication slots are enabled (#2960)
• Reconcile services every time the selectors change or when labels/annotations need to be changed (#2918)
• Defaults to app both the owner and database during recovery bootstrap (#2957)
• Avoid write-read concurrency on cached cluster (#2884)
• Remove empty items, make them unique and sort in the ResourceName sections of the generated roles (#2875)
• Ensure that the ContinuousArchiving condition is properly set to 'failed' in case of errors (#2625)
• Make the Backup resource reconciliation cycle more resilient on interruptions by stopping only if the backup is completed or failed (#2591)
• Reconcile PodMonitor labels and annotations (#2583)
• Fix backup failure due to missing RBAC resourceNames on the Role object (#2956)

• Observability:

  • Add TCP port label to default pg_stat_replication metric (#2961)
  • Fix the pg_wal_stat default metric for Prometheus (#2569)
  • Improve the pg_replication default metric for Prometheus (#2744 and #2750)
  • Use alertInstanceLabelFilter instead of alertName in the provided Grafana dashboard
  • Enforce standard_conforming_strings in metric collection (#2888)

Changes:

• Set the default operand image to PostgreSQL 16.0
• Fencing now uses PostgreSQL’s fast shutdown instead of smart shutdown to halt an instance (#3051)
• Rename webhooks from kb.io to cnpg.io group (#2851)
• Replace the cnpg snapshot command with cnpg backup -m volumeSnapshot for the kubectl plugin
• Let the cnpg hibernate plugin command use the ClusterManifestAnnotationName and PgControldataAnnotationName annotations on PVCs (#2657)
• Add the cnpg.io/instanceRole label while deprecating the existing role label (#2915)

Technical enhancements:

• Replace k8s-api-docgen with gen-crd-api-reference-docs to automatically build the API reference documentation (#2606)

Version 1.20.2

Release date: July 27, 2023

Enhancements:

• New logs command in the kubectl plugin, to retrieve or follow the logs of all pods in a cluster (#2375)
• Add support for specifying priorityClassName in pods, helping Kubernetes make scheduling decisions (#2043)
• Add a metric and status field to monitor node usage by a CloudNativePG cluster (#2257)
• Various enhancements to the documentation:
  • Add troubleshooting instructions relating to hugepages (#1390)
  • Extend the FAQs page (#2344)

Technical enhancements:

• Add a check at the start of the restore process to ensure it can proceed; give improved error diagnostics if it cannot (#2419)
• Improve handling of non-expiring passwords in managed roles (#2334)

Fixes:

• Ensure the logic of setting the recovery target matches that of Postgres (#2460)
• Prevent taking over service accounts not owned by the cluster, by setting ownerMetadata only during service account creation (#2462)
• Ensure correct permissions of the PGDATA directory for initdb and restore (#2384)
• Prevent a possible crash of the instance manager during the configuration reload (#2393)
• Prevent the LastFailedArchiveTime alert from triggering if a new backup has been successful after the failed ones (#1751)
• Prevent services from targeting non-instance pods (#2336)

Security:

• Updated all project dependencies to the latest versions

Version 1.20.1

Release date: June 12, 2023

Enhancements:

• Add the snapshot command to the cnpg plugin to create a consistent cold backup of the cluster from a standby using the Kubernetes VolumeSnapshot standard resource (#1960)
• First implementation of recovery from a set of CSI VolumeSnapshot resources via the .spec.bootstrap.recovery.volumeSnapshot stanza (#1960)
• Add pg_failover_slots to managed extensions (#2057)
• Improved Grafana dashboard with updated instructions in the documentation and the quickstart guide (#1916)
• Introduce the schemaOnly option in the import stanza, to avoid exporting and importing data when you bootstrap a new Postgres Cluster from one or more existing databases (#2234)
• Add support for TopologySpreadConstraints to manage scheduling of instance pods (#2202)
• Add PodMonitor support to the Poolerfor PgBouncer (#2034)
• Add option to override the default Kubernetes scheduler (#2013)
• Allow configuration of deployment strategy of a Pooler resource (#1983)
• Update default PostgreSQL version to 15.3 (#2022)
• Use PgBouncer 1.19 by default (#2018)

Technical enhancements:

• Updated k8s kind tested versions (#2054)
• Declarative roles should ignore passwords if not set, easing management of previously existing roles (#2029)
• Use separate transactions to reconcile role credentials. Before this patch, the operator would revert the synchronization of all roles if one failed (#2004)
• Ensure fencing is removed during cluster restore (#1987)
• Improve logging when deleting Pods (#2136)

Fixes:

• Fix unbound variable with k3s engine which could prevent setup on K3’s (#2157)
• Report the correct PG version in the metrics (#2126)
• Use the correct walStorage key in the documentation (#2140)
• Halt reconciliation when the operator cannot connect with the instances, and provide a clear diagnostic on such occasions. This will help clarify cases where network issues obstruct normal operation of CloudNativePG (#2145), (#2233), and (#2242)

Version 1.20.0

Release date: April 27, 2023

Features:

• Declarative role management: introduce the managed.roles stanza in the Cluster spec to provide full lifecycle management of database roles, by providing an abstraction to the related DDL commands in PostgreSQL, such as CREATE ROLE and ALTER ROLE (#1524, #1793 and #1815)
• Declarative hibernation of a PostgreSQL cluster: introduce a new annotation called cnpg.io/hibernation to declaratively hibernate a PostgreSQL cluster by deleting all pods and keeping the PVCs only; the feature also implements the inverse procedure (#1657)

Enhancements:

• Improve the --logs option of the report command of the cnpg plugin for kubectl to also include the previous logs where available (#1811)
• The -any service is now disabled by default (#1755)

Security:

• Enable customization of SeccompProfile through override via a local file (#1827)

Fixes:

• Apply the PostgreSQL configuration provided by the user during the initdb bootstrap phase, before the server is started the first time (#1858)