Re: unix domain sockets on Windows.

Peter Thanks for the definitive yes/no answer on the windows platform issue.

What was confusing was that the online manual does make references to the listen_addresses having a relationship to unix-domain sockets.

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9.1 (18.3. Connections and Authentication)

listen_addresses (string)

Specifies the TCP/IP address(es) on which the server is to listen for connections from client applications. The value takes the form of a comma-separated list of host names and/or numeric IP addresses. The special entry * corresponds to all available IP interfaces. The entry 0.0.0.0 allows listening for all IPv4 addresses and :: allows listening for all IPv6 addresses. If the list is empty, the server does not listen on any IP interface at all, in which case only Unix-domain sockets can be used to connect to it. The default value is localhost, which allows only local TCP/IP "loopback" connections to be made. While client authentication (Chapter 19) allows fine-grained control over who can access the server, listen_addresses controls which interfaces accept connection attempts, which can help prevent repeated malicious connection requests on insecure network interfaces. This parameter can only be set at server start.

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The relevant line being: If the list is empty, the server does not listen on any IP interface at all, in which case only Unix-domain sockets can be used to connect to it.

Upon re-reading this I don't think the intent was to imply that setting the list to empty would create one, just that if you did set it to empty the only possible connection method left would be a linux domain socket.

After some testing and documentation digging I think the real trigger for creating a domain socket is if you have one or more 'local' entries in the pg_hba.conf file. W/O a local line all connections on unix-domain sockets would be rejected anyway so one is not created. I can't find any other parameter that turns them on or off directly. However, I would not be surprised if there is one. There are so many parameters it is quite easy to miss one.

-Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Eisentraut [mailto:peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net]
Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2012 7:21 AM
To: Jeff Rule
Cc: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] unix domain sockets on Windows.

On lör, 2011-12-31 at 17:06 -0800, Jeff Rule wrote:
> Does the postgres server support listening on unix domain sockets on windows?

No.

> It seems to me that they do not, but this is not called out directly in the documentation.
>
> Listen_address in postgresql.conf
>
> listen_addresses = '' # what IP address(es) to listen on;
> # comma-separated list of addresses;
> # defaults to 'localhost', '*' = all
> # (change requires restart)

It says right there that it controls what *IP addresses* to listen to.
It does not have anything to do with Unix-domain sockets. There are other options that control whether and where those are created.

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