Re: Have an encrypted pgpass file

Thomas Munro <thomas(dot)munro(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 5:46 AM, Marco van Eck <marco(dot)vaneck(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> Since .pgpass files contain plain-text passwords, I searched for an
>> alternative.
>> In the attached patch I've added the possibility to run a command to produce
>> the content of the pgpass file, in exactly the same format.

> ... Here you side step those questions completely and make that the end
> user's problem. I like it.

... but doesn't this just encourage people to build hacks that aren't
really any more secure than the unreadable-file approach? In fact,
I'm afraid this would be an attractive nuisance, in that people would
build one-off hacks that get no security vetting and don't really work.

I'd like to see a concrete example of a use-case that really does add
security; preferably one short and useful enough to put into the docs
so that people might copy-and-paste it rather than rolling their own.
It seems possible that something of the sort could be built atop
ssh-agent or gpg-agent, for instance.

regards, tom lane