pgBackRest 2.60.0 adds page checksum errors, GCS Workload Identity

pgBackRest 2.60.0 tightens data integrity checks by making page checksum failures fatal during restore unless explicitly downgraded to warnings. The release also adds cloud-native authentication for Google Cloud Storage and performance improvements for object store operations. PostgreSQL 19 RC 1 compatibility was already present in v2.59.2 and continues here.

What changes in pgBackRest 2.60.0

• checksum-page-error option: New default behavior causes restore to halt on invalid page checksums, leaving the cluster incomplete; set to n for warning-only mode
• GCS Workload Identity Federation: Enables credential-less authentication for Google Cloud Storage workloads
• Prefetch multi-file/range reads: Object store performance improvement through parallelized readahead
• Azure batch retry: Sub-requests missing from batch responses now automatically retried
• Build changes: Git checkouts now require PyYAML instead of libyaml; release tarballs remain self-contained
• Platform support: illumos builds now supported; OpenSSL 4 compatibility added

Why it matters

The stricter checksum handling may force operators to review backup health before restores, but prevents silent data corruption in production clusters. GCS Workload Identity Federation removes long-lived credential management for Google Cloud users.