Re: Prevent pg_basebackup -Fp -D -?

On Oct 3, 2013 2:47 AM, "Michael Paquier" <michael(dot)paquier(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 2, 2013 at 11:31 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus(at)hagander(dot)net>
wrote:
> > Right now, if you use
> >
> > pg_basebackup -Ft -D -
> >
> > you get a tarfile, written to stdout, for redirection.
> >
> > However, if you use:
> >
> > pg_basebackup -Fp -D -
> >
> > you get a plaintext (unpackaged) backup, in a directory called "-".
> >
> > I can't think of a single usecase where this is a good idea. Therefor,
> > I would suggest we simply throw an error in this case, instead of
> > creating the directory. Only for the specific case of specifying
> > exactly "-" as a directory.
> >
> > Comments?
> Isn't this a non-problem? This behavior is in line with the
> documentation, so I would suspected that if directory name is
> specified as "-" in plain mode, it should create the folder with this
> name.
> Do you consider having a folder of this name an annoyance?

Yes, that is exactly the point - i do consider that an annoyance, and i
don't see the use case where you'd actually want it. I bet 100% of the
users of that have been accidental, thinking they'd get the pipe, not the
directory.

> > Also, if we do that, is this something we should consider
> > backpatchable? It's not strictly speaking a bugfix, but I'd say it
> > fixes some seriously annoying behavior.
> This would change the spec of pg_basebackup, so no? Does the current
> behavior have potential security issues?

No, there are no security issues that I can see. Just annoyance. And yes, I
guess it would change the spec, so backpatching might be a bad idea..

/Magnus