Re: dropping a user causes pain (#2)

If people want to remove a user, I assume they don't want to keep
old objects around.

How about if we created a script that goes through all the databases and
reports items owned by a specific user, or orphaned items not owned by
anyone?

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Tom Lane wrote:
> Andreas Pflug <pgadmin(at)pse-consulting(dot)de> writes:
> > Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> >> OTOH I'm not sure how much harm this causes, other than aesthetic.
> >>
> > Dropping a user could merely set a "dropped" flag to disable login, and
> > some VACUUM action could cleanup databases.
>
> Not sure I care for the "vacuum" part of that, but how about this
> variant: DROP USER sets a flag in pg_shadow to disable login, and
> the pg_shadow entry isn't removed, ever. (We could tweak the pg_user
> view to hide dropped users, but anything looking directly at pg_shadow
> would have to be taught about the flag, analogous to what happened with
> attisdropped in the last release.)
>
> The advantage here is that the sysid assigned to the user would remain
> present in pg_shadow and couldn't accidentally be assigned to a new
> user. This would prevent the problem of new users "inheriting"
> permissions and even object ownership from deleted users due to chance
> coincidence of sysid.
>
> I suppose one could delete the pg_shadow row once one is darn certain
> there is no trace of the user's sysid anywhere, but it's not clear to me
> it's worth the trouble.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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