Re: restrictions on pg_cancel_backend

On 05/24/2013 05:46 PM, Joe Carlson wrote:
>
> A question: I'm working in 8.4 and do not have postgres superuser privileges. A few times when I have application code that generates a query that is running amuck (>24 hours run time) and I'd like to cancel it. Killing the application on the client machine does not cancel the query so I'd like to be able to use pg_cancel_backend to kill the query. But this is not possible if I'm not a postgres superuser.
>
> I was wondering: is this by design? Is there a reason ordinary users cannot kill their own queries? Is is a security concern?

well pgeu-general is not the best list to ask this question but anyway,
for a long while there have been issues with SIGTERM in general and the
safeness aspects of allowing users to kill sessions (hence the
restriction to superuser). However in 9.3 it will be possible to exceute
pg_terminate_backend() against other backends if you have the exact same
role.

regards

Stefan