Re: Contrib Schemas

From: Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org
Cc: John DeSoi <desoi(at)pgedit(dot)com>, Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl(at)familyhealth(dot)com(dot)au>
Subject: Re: Contrib Schemas
Date: 2006-01-13 19:34:20
Message-ID: 200601131134.20371.josh@agliodbs.com
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John,

> Would it be reasonable for there to be a way for the super user to
> grant access to load "approved" modules and/or C language functions?

I can't see a way to do this except individually, in which case the
superuser might as well load the functions. We *have* to be restrictive
about this because a C function can do anything, including overwriting
whatever parts of the filesystem "postgres" has access to. Look over our
patch releases for the last 2 years and you'll see a host of patches
designed specifically to prevent regular users from gaining access to
superuser priveleges.

What you want isn't impossible, but it would be a lot of work and testing
to engineer such a mechanism and keep PostgreSQL's "most secure" status.
So far, everyone has found it easier to work around the issue, especially
since for most sites backup/restore is done by the superuser anyway.

--
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

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