== PostgreSQL Weekly News - February 23 2014 ==

== PostgreSQL Weekly News - February 23 2014 ==

PostgreSQL 9.3.3, 9.2.7, 9.1.12, 9.0.16, and 8.4.20 bug fix releases
are out. Upgrade ASAP.
http://www.postgresql.org/about/news/1506/

== PostgreSQL Product News ==

The next version of pgXplorer, a GUI for postgres 8.4+, released.
The code is open sourced under the ISC license and can be found on github at:
https://github.com/davyjones/pgXplorer

pitrery 1.6, a set of bash scripts to manage PITR backups for
PostgreSQL, released.
http://dalibo.github.io/pitrery/

psqlODBC 09.03.0200 released.
http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/odbc/versions/

== PostgreSQL Jobs for February ==

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-jobs/2014-02/threads.php

== PostgreSQL Local ==

Nordic PGDay 2014 will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, at the Hilton
Stockholm Hotel, on March 20, 2014.
http://2014.nordicpgday.org/

PGConf NYC 2014 will be held April 3-4, 2014 in New York, New York, USA.
http://nyc.pgconf.us/2014/

The Open Data Summit will be held Friday April 11, 2014 in Denver,
Colorado, USA.
http://www.opendatasummit.com

PGCon 2014, the world-wide developer conference for PostgreSQL, will
be in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada May 20-24, 2014.
http://www.pgcon.org/2014/

== PostgreSQL in the News ==

Planet PostgreSQL: http://planet.postgresql.org/

PostgreSQL Weekly News is brought to you this week by David Fetter

Submit news and announcements by Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific time.
Please send English language ones to david(at)fetter(dot)org, German language
to pwn(at)pgug(dot)de, Italian language to pwn(at)itpug(dot)org(dot) Spanish language
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== Applied Patches ==

Tom Lane pushed:

- Improve documentation about multixact IDs. Per gripe from Josh
Berkus.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/e7f409756dac9fedc12d5aece0f8df5efb8d9e01

- Remove broken code that tried to handle OVERLAPS with a single
argument. The SQL standard says that OVERLAPS should have a
two-element row constructor on each side. The original coding of
OVERLAPS support in our grammar attempted to extend that by allowing
a single-element row constructor, which it internally duplicated ...
or tried to, anyway. But that code has certainly not worked since
our List infrastructure was rewritten in 2004, and I'm none too sure
it worked before that. As it stands, it ends up building a List
that includes itself, leading to assorted undesirable behaviors
later in the parser. Even if it worked as intended, it'd be a bit
evil because of the possibility of duplicate evaluation of a
volatile function that the user had written only once. Given the
lack of documentation, test cases, or complaints, let's just get rid
of the idea and only support the standard syntax. While we're at
it, improve the error cursor positioning for the
wrong-number-of-arguments errors, and inline the makeOverlaps()
function since it's only called in one place anyway. Per bug #9227
from Joshua Yanovski. Initial patch by Joshua Yanovski, extended a
bit by me.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/a222f7fda6a04ab8ec655cd5a9de5ff70ff916c3

- Fix some missing .gitignore and "make clean" items in ecpg. Some of
the files we optionally link in from elsewhere weren't ignored
and/or weren't cleaned up at "make clean". Noted while testing on a
machine that needs our version of snprintf.c.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/52acfd27f11ca586f90c2c1255ca9a4a66766b57

- Avoid using dllwrap to build pgevent in Mingw builds. If this
works, we can get rid of configure's support for locating dllwrap
... but let's see what the buildfarm says, first. Hiroshi Inoue
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4f5f485d10cad372a3a0cd8dd70780f1a32f43f0

- Remove inappropriate EXPORTS line. Looks like this gets added later
...
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/ae5266f25910d6e084692a7cdbd02b9e52800046

- Prevent potential overruns of fixed-size buffers. Coverity
identified a number of places in which it couldn't prove that a
string being copied into a fixed-size buffer would fit. We believe
that most, perhaps all of these are in fact safe, or are copying
data that is coming from a trusted source so that any overrun is not
really a security issue. Nonetheless it seems prudent to forestall
any risk by using strlcpy() and similar functions. Fixes by Peter
Eisentraut and Jozef Mlich based on Coverity reports. In addition,
fix a potential null-pointer-dereference crash in contrib/chkpass.
The crypt(3) function is defined to return NULL on failure, but
chkpass.c didn't check for that before using the result. The main
practical case in which this could be an issue is if libc is
configured to refuse to execute unapproved hashing algorithms (e.g.,
"FIPS mode"). This ideally should've been a separate commit, but
since it touches code adjacent to one of the buffer overrun changes,
I included it in this commit to avoid last-minute merge issues.
This issue was reported by Honza Horak. Security: CVE-2014-0065 for
buffer overruns, CVE-2014-0066 for crypt()
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/01824385aead50e557ca1af28640460fa9877d51

- Document risks of "make check" in the regression testing
instructions. Since the temporary server started by "make check"
uses "trust" authentication, another user on the same machine could
connect to it as database superuser, and then potentially exploit
the privileges of the operating-system user who started the tests.
We should change the testing procedures to prevent this risk; but
discussion is required about the best way to do that, as well as
more testing than is practical for an undisclosed security problem.
Besides, the same issue probably affects some user-written test
harnesses. So for the moment, we'll just warn people against using
"make check" when there are untrusted users on the same machine. In
passing, remove some ancient advice that suggested making the
regression testing subtree world-writable if you'd built as root.
That looks dangerously insecure in modern contexts, and anyway we
should not be encouraging people to build Postgres as root.
Security: CVE-2014-0067
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/6ef325429cad60d7d24504fa25b5318fd4e35379

- Last-minute updates for release notes. Add entries for security
issues. Security: CVE-2014-0060 through CVE-2014-0067
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7b1fab3fd2e17063fb1ec98e8ff5512a6b3da9b6

- Do ScalarArrayOp estimation correctly when array is a stable
expression. Most estimation functions apply
estimate_expression_value to see if they can reduce an expression to
a constant; the key difference is that it allows evaluation of
stable as well as immutable functions in hopes of ending up with a
simple Const node. scalararraysel didn't get the memo though, and
neither did gincost_opexpr/gincost_scalararrayopexpr. Fix that, and
remove a now-unnecessary estimate_expression_value step in the
subsidiary function scalararraysel_containment. Per complaint from
Alexey Klyukin. Back-patch to 9.3. The problem goes back further,
but I'm hesitant to change estimation behavior in long-stable
release branches.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/77585bce03042e8fee62d8df0dde9c008a904699

- Plug some more holes in encoding conversion. Various places assume
that pg_do_encoding_conversion() and pg_server_to_any() will ensure
encoding validity of their results; but they failed to do so in the
case that the source encoding is SQL_ASCII while the destination is
not. We cannot perform any actual "conversion" in that scenario,
but we should still validate the string according to the destination
encoding. Per bug #9210 from Digoal Zhou. Arguably this is a
back-patchable bug fix, but on the other hand adding more enforcing
of encoding checks might break existing applications that were being
sloppy. On balance there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for a
back-patch, so fix in HEAD only. While at it, remove some
apparently-no-longer-needed provisions for letting
pg_do_encoding_conversion() "work" outside a transaction --- if you
consider it "working" to silently fail to do the requested
conversion. Also, make a few cosmetic improvements in mbutils.c,
notably removing some Asserts that are certainly dead code since the
variables they assert aren't null are never null, even at process
start. (I think this wasn't true at one time, but it is now.)
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/49c817eab78c6f0ce8c3bf46766b73d6cf3190b7

- Prefer pg_any_to_server/pg_server_to_any over
pg_do_encoding_conversion. A large majority of the callers of
pg_do_encoding_conversion were specifying the database encoding as
either source or target of the conversion, meaning that we can use
the less general functions pg_any_to_server/pg_server_to_any
instead. The main advantage of using the latter functions is that
they can make use of a cached conversion-function lookup in the
common case that the other encoding is the current client_encoding.
It's notationally cleaner too in most cases, not least because of
the historical artifact that the latter functions use "char *"
rather than "unsigned char *" in their APIs. Note that
pg_any_to_server will apply an encoding verification step in some
cases where pg_do_encoding_conversion would have just done nothing.
This seems to me to be a good idea at most of these call sites,
though it partially negates the performance benefit. Per discussion
of bug #9210.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/769065c1b2471f484bb48bb58a8bdcf1d12a419c

Robert Haas pushed:

- Fix capitalization in README. Vik Fearing
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/876f78d57566a60e443d40f7c789c36566749e2f

- Add a pg_lsn data type, to represent an LSN. Robert Haas and
Michael Paquier
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7d03a83f4d0736ba869fa6f93973f7623a27038a

- pg_lsn macro naming and type behavior revisions. Change pg_lsn_mi
so that it can return negative values when subtracting LSNs, and
clean up some perhaps ill-considered macro names.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/844a28a9dd1a48045ad1db9246da5e2783c9bd40

- Switch various builtin functions to use pg_lsn instead of text. The
functions in slotfuncs.c don't exist in any released version, but
the changes to xlogfuncs.c represent backward-incompatibilities.
Per discussion, we're hoping that the queries using these functions
are few enough and simple enough that this won't cause too much
breakage for users. Michael Paquier, reviewed by Andres Freund and
further modified by me.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/6f289c2b7d00f07f13f679092f7c71f78950e9da

- Document pg_replslot in storage.sgml. Per an observation from Amit
Kapila.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7b3cf9ba9d3d12ad95c0a06cef04f9097a9c65cf

- Further code review for pg_lsn data type. Change input function
error messages to be more consistent with what is done elsewhere.
Remove a bunch of redundant type casts, so that the compiler will
warn us if we screw up. Don't pass LSNs by value on platforms where
a Datum is only 32 bytes, per buildfarm. Move macros for packing
and unpacking LSNs to pg_lsn.h so that we can include
access/xlogdefs.h, to avoid an unsatisfied dependency on XLogRecPtr.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/694e3d139a9d090c58494428bebfadad216419da

- Avoid repeated name lookups during table and index DDL. If the name
lookups come to different conclusions due to concurrent activity, we
might perform some parts of the DDL on a different table than other
parts. At least in the case of CREATE INDEX, this can be used to
cause the permissions checks to be performed against a different
table than the index creation, allowing for a privilege escalation
attack. This changes the calling convention for DefineIndex,
CreateTrigger, transformIndexStmt, transformAlterTableStmt,
CheckIndexCompatible (in 9.2 and newer), and AlterTable (in 9.1 and
older). In addition, CheckRelationOwnership is removed in 9.2 and
newer and the calling convention is changed in older branches. A
field has also been added to the Constraint node (FkConstraint in
8.4). Third-party code calling these functions or using the
Constraint node will require updating. Report by Andres Freund.
Patch by Robert Haas and Andres Freund, reviewed by Tom Lane.
Security: CVE-2014-0062
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/5f173040e324f6c2eebb90d86cf1b0cdb5890f0a

Heikki Linnakangas pushed:

- Fix comment; checkpointer, not bgwriter, performs checkpoints since
9.2. Amit Langote
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/057152b37c8dbbddf87de2be32314a3d4fec5d5e

- Improve comment on setting data_checksum GUC. There was an extra
space there, and "fixed" wasn't very descriptive.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/8f09ca436dbeda5350a0864adeaa22f920692382

- Avoid integer overflow in hstore_to_json(). The length of the
output buffer was calculated based on the size of the argument
hstore. On a sizeof(int) == 4 platform and a huge argument, it could
overflow, causing a too small buffer to be allocated. Refactor the
function to use a StringInfo instead of pre-allocating the buffer.
Makes it shorter and more readable, too.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/0c5783ff301ae3e470000c918bfc2395129de4c5

Magnus Hagander pushed:

- Disable RandomizedBaseAddress on MSVC builds. The ASLR in Windows
8/Windows 2012 can break PostgreSQL's shared memory. It doesn't fail
every time (which is explained by the Random part in ASLR), but can
fail with errors abut failing to reserve shared memory region.
MauMau, reviewed by Craig Ringer
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/7f3e17b4827b61ad84e0774e3e43da4c57c4487f

Peter Eisentraut pushed:

- doc: Clarify documentation page header customization code. The
customization overrode the fast-forward code with its custom Up
link. So this is no longer really the fast-forward feature, so we
might as well turn that off and override the non-ff template
instead, thus removing one mental indirection. Fix the wrong column
span declaration. Clarify and update the documentation.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/8c059dffd83384fa0c2fe6050429d601355bc3af

- pg_basebackup: Add support for relocating tablespaces. Tablespaces
can be relocated in plain backup mode by specifying one or more -T
olddir=newdir options. Author: Steeve Lennmark
<steevel(at)handeldsbanken(dot)se> Reviewed-by: Peter Eisentraut
<peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net>
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/fb05f3ce83d225dd0f39f8860ce04082753e9e98

- configure.in: Use dnl in place of # where appropriate. The comment
added by ed011d9754fd4b76eac0eaa8c057fcfc0c302a6a used #, which
means it gets copied into configure, but it doesn't make sense
there. So use dnl, which gets dropped when creating configure.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/2c65856b7b444a5e804d4f694438e7444811d26b

- doc: Improve DocBook XML validity. DocBook XML is superficially
compatible with DocBook SGML but has a slightly stricter DTD that we
have been violating in a few cases. Although XSLT doesn't care
whether the document is valid, the style sheets don't necessarily
process invalid documents correctly, so we need to work toward
fixing this. This first commit moves the indexterms in refentry
elements to an allowed position. It has no impact on the output.
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/bb4eefe7bf518e42c73797ea37b033a5d8a8e70a

Noah Misch pushed:

- Prevent privilege escalation in explicit calls to PL validators.
The primary role of PL validators is to be called implicitly during
CREATE FUNCTION, but they are also normal functions that a user can
call explicitly. Add a permissions check to each validator to
ensure that a user cannot use explicit validator calls to achieve
things he could not otherwise achieve. Back-patch to 8.4 (all
supported versions). Non-core procedural language extensions ought
to make the same two-line change to their own validators. Andres
Freund, reviewed by Tom Lane and Noah Misch. Security:
CVE-2014-0061
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/537cbd35c893e67a63c59bc636c3e888bd228bc7

- Shore up ADMIN OPTION restrictions. Granting a role without ADMIN
OPTION is supposed to prevent the grantee from adding or removing
members from the granted role. Issuing SET ROLE before the GRANT
bypassed that, because the role itself had an implicit right to add
or remove members. Plug that hole by recognizing that implicit
right only when the session user matches the current role.
Additionally, do not recognize it during a security-restricted
operation or during execution of a SECURITY DEFINER function. The
restriction on SECURITY DEFINER is not security-critical. However,
it seems best for a user testing his own SECURITY DEFINER function
to see the same behavior others will see. Back-patch to 8.4 (all
supported versions). The SQL standards do not conflate roles and
users as PostgreSQL does; only SQL roles have members, and only SQL
users initiate sessions. An application using PostgreSQL users and
roles as SQL users and roles will never attempt to grant membership
in the role that is the session user, so the implicit right to add
or remove members will never arise. The security impact was mostly
that a role member could revoke access from others, contrary to the
wishes of his own grantor. Unapproved role member additions are
less notable, because the member can still largely achieve that by
creating a view or a SECURITY DEFINER function. Reviewed by Andres
Freund and Tom Lane. Reported, independently, by Jonas Sundman and
Noah Misch. Security: CVE-2014-0060
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/fea164a72a7bfd50d77ba5fb418d357f8f2bb7d0

- Fix handling of wide datetime input/output. Many server functions
use the MAXDATELEN constant to size a buffer for parsing or
displaying a datetime value. It was much too small for the longest
possible interval output and slightly too small for certain valid
timestamp input, particularly input with a long timezone name. The
long input was rejected needlessly; the long output caused
interval_out() to overrun its buffer. ECPG's pgtypes library has a
copy of the vulnerable functions, which bore the same
vulnerabilities along with some of its own. In contrast to the
server, certain long inputs caused stack overflow rather than
failing cleanly. Back-patch to 8.4 (all supported versions).
Reported by Daniel Schüssler, reviewed by Tom Lane. Security:
CVE-2014-0063
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/4318daecc959886d001a6e79c6ea853e8b1dfb4b

- Predict integer overflow to avoid buffer overruns. Several
functions, mostly type input functions, calculated an allocation
size such that the calculation wrapped to a small positive value
when arguments implied a sufficiently-large requirement. Writes
past the end of the inadvertent small allocation followed shortly
thereafter. Coverity identified the path_in() vulnerability; code
inspection led to the rest. In passing, add check_stack_depth() to
prevent stack overflow in related functions. Back-patch to 8.4 (all
supported versions). The non-comment hstore changes touch code that
did not exist in 8.4, so that part stops at 9.0. Noah Misch and
Heikki Linnakangas, reviewed by Tom Lane. Security: CVE-2014-0064
http://git.postgresql.org/pg/commitdiff/31400a673325147e1205326008e32135a78b4d8a

== Rejected Patches (for now) ==

No one was disappointed this week :-)

== Pending Patches ==

Emre Hasegeli sent in another revision of a patch to improve the
display of wide tables in psql.

SAWADA Masahiko sent in a patch to fix an issue where pg_basebackup
skips the pg_replslot directory.

Bruce Momjian sent in a patch to update the defaults for work_mem and
maintenance_work_mem to post-1990s server specifications.

Etsuro Fujita sent in a patch to fix an issue where
create_foreignscan_path() does not set the rowcounts based on
ParamPathInfo when the path is a parameterized path.

Heikki Linnakangas sent in two more revisions of a patch to fix a
memory ordering issue in LWLockRelease, WakeupWaiters, and
WALInsertSlotRelease.

Mitsumasa KONDO and Fabien COELHO traded patches to create an option
for pgbench to use a Guassian distribution.

Emre Hasegeli sent in two more revisions of a patch to add GiST
indexing support for inet types.

Pavel Stehule sent in another revision of a patch to add an
--if-exists option for pg_dump.

Alvaro Herrera and Pavel Stehule traded patches to implement a new
make_timestamp() function.

Florian Pflug sent in two more revisions of a patch to implement
inverse transition functions for aggregates.

Hiroshi Inoue sent in a patch to simplify and correct linking to Perl
on Mingw.

Michael Paquier sent in a patch to quiet a compiler warning which whas
recently introduced into pg_backup_archiver.c.

Kaigai Kouhei sent in two more revisions of a patch to implement
custom scan nodes and use same.

Rajeev Rastogi sent in two more revisions of a patch to fix an issue
where the PostgreSQL Service on Windows does not start if data
directory given is relative path.

Ronan Dunklau sent in a patch to implement IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA.

Christian Kruse sent in three more revisions of a patch to show xid
and xmin in pg_stat_activity and pg_stat_replication.

Tomas Vondra sent in a patch to fix an issue where
pgstat_recv_dropdb(), instead of building path to the temporary file
in pg_stat_tmp, builds a path to the permanent file in pg_stat.

Christian Kruse sent in another revision of a patch to show relation
and tuple information of a lock to acquire.

Michael Paquier sent in a patch to update the pageinspect extension so
it can see page_header with pg_lsn datatype.

Rukh Meski sent in a patch to implement UPDATE/DELETE ... ORDER BY ...
LIMIT ...