Re: scram and \password

On 03/10/2017 02:43 PM, Michael Paquier wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 2:53 AM, Jeff Janes <jeff(dot)janes(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> Should the \password tool in psql inspect password_encryption and act on it
>> being 'scram'?
>
> Not sure if it is wise to change the default fot this release.
>
>> I didn't see this issue discussed, but the ability to search the archives
>> for backslashes is rather limited.
>
> I'll save you some time: it has not been discussed. Nor has
> PQencryptPassword been mentioned. Changing to SCRAM is not that
> complicated, just call scram_build_verifier() and you are good to go.
>
> Instead of changing the default, I think that we should take this
> occasion to rename PQencryptPassword to something like
> PQhashPassword(), and extend it with a method argument to support both
> md5 and scram. PQencryptPassword could also be marked as deprecated,
> or let as-is for some time. For \password, we could have another
> meta-command but that sounds grotty, or just extend \password with a
> --method argument. Switching the default could happen in another
> release.
>
> A patch among those lines would be a simple, do people feel that this
> should be part of PG 10?

Seems like it should work in an analogous way to CREATE/ALTER ROLE.
According to the docs:

8<----
ENCRYPTED
UNENCRYPTED

These key words control whether the password is stored encrypted in
the system catalogs. (If neither is specified, the default behavior is
determined by the configuration parameter password_encryption.) If the
presented password string is already in MD5-encrypted or SCRAM-encrypted
format, then it is stored encrypted as-is, regardless of whether
ENCRYPTED or UNENCRYPTED is specified (since the system cannot decrypt
the specified encrypted password string). This allows reloading of
encrypted passwords during dump/restore.
8<----

So if the password is not already set, \password uses
password_encryption to determine which format to use, and if the
password is already set, then the current method is assumed.

Joe

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