Re: [COMMITTERS] pgsql/ oc/src/sgml/client-auth.sgml oc/src/sgm ...

Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
>> Fix pg_pwd caching mechanism, which was broken by changes to fork
>> postmaster children before client auth step. Postmaster now rereads
>> pg_pwd on receipt of SIGHUP, the same way that pg_hba.conf is handled.

> Tom, does a client do a kill() to its parent on password change?

Right, it's basically the same as the way we handle checkpoint and
SI-overrun signaling:

/*
* Signal the postmaster to reload its password-file cache.
*/
if (IsUnderPostmaster)
kill(getppid(), SIGHUP);

> If this is true, people can't depend on editing pg_hba.conf and having
> the change take affect _only_ when they sighup the postmaster.

True. But recall that in all previous releases it's been completely
unsafe to edit pg_hba.conf in place, so I don't regard this as a big
step backwards.

We could possibly set up the password-file-reload action to occur on
some other, presently unused signal. But there aren't a lot of spare
signal numbers left, and I'm not eager to use one up for this...

regards, tom lane