Re: Providing catalog view to pg_hba.conf file - Patch submission

* Josh Berkus (josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com) wrote:
> On 02/27/2015 04:41 PM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> >> we can do copy of pg_hba.conf somewhere when postmaster starts or when it
> >> is reloaded.
> >
> > Please see my reply to Tom. There's no trivial way to reach into the
> > postmaster from a backend- but we do get a copy of whatever the
> > postmaster had when we forked, and the postmaster only reloads
> > pg_hba.conf on a sighup and that sighup is passed down to the children,
> > so we simply need to also reload the pg_hba.conf in the children when
> > they get a sighup.
> >
> > That's how postgresql.conf is handled, which is what pg_settings is
> > based off of, and I believe is the behavior folks are really looking
> > for.
>
> I thought the patch in question just implemented reading the file from
> disk, and nothing else?
>
> Speaking for my uses, I would rather have just that for 9.5 than wait
> for something more sophisticated in 9.6.

From my perspective, at least, the differences we're talking about are
not enough to raise this to a 9.5-vs-9.6 issue. I can see the use cases
for both (which is exactly why I suggested providing both). Having one
would be better than nothing, but I foretell lots of subsequent
complaints along the lines of "everything looks right according to
pg_hba_config, but I'm getting this error!!" Now, perhaps that's the
right approach to go for 9.5 since it'd more-or-less force our hand to
deal with it in 9.6 properly, but, personally, I'd be happier if we
moved forward with providing both because everyone agrees that it makes
sense rather than waiting to see if user complaints force our hand.

Thanks!

Stephen