Re: postgres uptime

Marc G. Fournier wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Tom Lane wrote:
>
> > Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)dcc(dot)uchile(dot)cl> writes:
> >> Is the uptime kept internally anywhere? Or even the start time?
> >
> > No, and no (at least not in any globally accessible variable).
> >
> >> If it is, it would be quite trivial to provide access to it
> >
> > Not really --- in the EXEC_BACKEND case, we'd have to do something
> > explicit to pass the value down to backends.
>
> Couldn't it be stored in shared memory?

We already have a mechanism to pass global variables to EXEC_BACKEND so
that part is pretty simple.

> > I'd like to see more than one person requesting this (and with solider
> > rationales) before it gets added to TODO. If I wanted to be picky I
> > would suggest that knowledge of the server start time might be useful
> > information to an attacker. It would for instance narrow down the
> > number of possible starting seeds for the postmaster's random number
> > generator.
>
> Wouldn't an attacker have to have access to the server in the first place
> to get that information?

I think so, and if they do, they can use 'ps' to see the start time of
the postmaster.

However, I do think this is an 8.1 item.

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