Re: initdb recommendations

On 5/24/19 8:13 AM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> * Joe Conway (mail(at)joeconway(dot)com) wrote:
>> On 5/23/19 10:30 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
>> > * Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
>> >> "Jonathan S. Katz" <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> writes:
>> >> > For now I have left in the password based method to be scram-sha-256 as
>> >> > I am optimistic about the support across client drivers[1] (and FWIW I
>> >> > have an implementation for crystal-pg ~60% done).
>> >>
>> >> > However, this probably means we would need to set the default password
>> >> > encryption guc to "scram-sha-256" which we're not ready to do yet, so it
>> >> > may be moot to leave it in.
>> >>
>> >> > So, thinking out loud about that, we should probably use "md5" and once
>> >> > we decide to make the encryption method "scram-sha-256" by default, then
>> >> > we update the recommendation?
>> >>
>> >> Meh. If we're going to break things, let's break them. Set it to
>> >> scram by default and let people who need to cope with old clients
>> >> change the default. I'm tired of explaining that MD5 isn't actually
>> >> insecure in our usage ...
>> >
>> > +many.
>>
>> many++
>>
>> Are we doing this for pg12? In any case, I would think we better loudly
>> point out this change somewhere.
>
> Sure, we should point it out, but I don't know that it needs to be
> screamed from the rooftops considering the packagers have already been
> largely ignoring our defaults here anyway...

Yeah, I thought about that, but anyone not using those packages will be
in for a big surprise. Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly endorse the
change, but I predict many related questions on the lists, and anything
we can do to mitigate that should be done.

Joe
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