Re: Questions on PostGreSQL Authentication mechanism...

Joshua D. Drake escribió:
> On Tue, 2010-02-02 at 16:09 -0300, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> > Tim Bruce - Postgres escribió:
> > > On Tue, February 2, 2010 08:23, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> >
> > > > Probably pg_read_file():
> > > >
> > > > select pg_read_file('pg_hba.conf', 0, 8192);
> > > >
> > > > Note that pg_read_file only allows paths relative to $PGDATA, which is
> > > > what you get from SHOW data_directory;
> > >
> > > Since the pg_hba.conf file is located in the /etc path, the pg_read_file
> > > command fails with an error of
> > >
> > > "could not open file "pg_hba.conf" for reading: No such file or direcotry"
> >
> > Hmm, yeah, that's a shortcoming of the debian packaging, no doubt. Does
> > it not install symlinks in the actual data directory? If not, that
> > should be reported as a bug ...
>
> I disagree. Debian/Ubuntu use the postgresql.conf facilities to have a
> different postgresql.conf.

That's all very good but in doing so they disabled the ability to edit
the files through pg_file_read and pg_file_write, so this patch needs
more thought or handling on their part. It works fine in pristine
PostgreSQL, so it's not our bug. I assume pgAdmin is unable to edit the
config files in Debian due to this problem.

For example, perhaps there could be a new pair of functions
pg_read_hba_file/pg_write_hba_file that would work even if the files are
placed in other directories, but they (Debian) would need to propose it.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.