Re: system administration functions with hardcoded superuser checks

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 12:09:10PM -0500, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> There are some system administration functions that have hardcoded
> superuser checks, specifically:
>
> pg_reload_conf
> pg_rotate_logfile
> pg_read_file
> pg_read_file_all
> pg_read_binary_file
> pg_read_binary_file_all
> pg_stat_file
> pg_ls_dir
>
> Some of these are useful in monitoring or maintenance tools, and the
> hardcoded superuser checks require that these tools run with maximum
> privileges. Couldn't we just install these functions without default
> privileges and allow users to grant privileges as necessary?

+1. You can already use a SECURITY DEFINER wrapper, so I don't think this
opens any particular floodgate. GRANT is a nicer interface. However, I would
not advertise this as a replacement for wrapper functions until pg_dump can
preserve ACL changes to pg_catalog objects.