Re: Logging of PAM Authentication Failure

From: Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>
To: Amit Langote <amitlangote09(at)gmail(dot)com>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Kyotaro HORIGUCHI <kyota(dot)horiguchi(at)gmail(dot)com>, Kyotaro HORIGUCHI <horiguchi(dot)kyotaro(at)lab(dot)ntt(dot)co(dot)jp>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com>, PostgreSQL-development <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Logging of PAM Authentication Failure
Date: 2013-05-16 16:32:44
Message-ID: 20130516163244.GA4130@awork2.anarazel.de
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-hackers

On 2013-05-17 01:29:25 +0900, Amit Langote wrote:
> On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 1:05 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > Amit Langote <amitlangote09(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> >> On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 8:01 PM, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> >>> I unfortunately have to say I don't really see the point of this. The
> >>> cost of the additional connection attempt is rather low and we have to
> >>> deal with the superflous attempts anyway since there will be old libpqs
> >>> around for years. Why is this worth the effort?
> >
> >> While full connection sequence (with proper authentication exchanges)
> >> appears to go smoothly for other cases (authentication methods), it
> >> doesn't quite in this case probably because accounting for such a case
> >> was not considered to be as important. But while investigating about
> >> the PAM issue (original subject of this thread), it turned out that
> >> the occurrence of that minor issue was due to this behavior in libpq.
> >
> > I have to agree with Andres that it's not clear this is a reasonable
> > fix. To get rid of extra reconnections this way will require not merely
> > upgrading libpq, but upgrading every single application that uses libpq
> > and is capable of prompting its user for a password. The odds are
> > pretty good that that won't ever happen.
>
> Can this stay in the future releases for new users of libpq to
> consider using it (saving them a reconnection, however small a benefit
> that is) or at least psql which is being changed to use it anyway? I
> only think it makes libpq take into account a connection state that
> could be used.

Which basically is an API & ABI break since its not handled in existing
callers. So you would need to make it conditional. At that point the
complexity really doesn't seem warranted.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

--
Andres Freund http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services

In response to

Responses

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Tom Lane 2013-05-16 16:46:50 Re: Logging of PAM Authentication Failure
Previous Message Amit Langote 2013-05-16 16:29:25 Re: Logging of PAM Authentication Failure