Re: permission issues with PostgreSQL 9.2 EnterpriseDB one-click installer on windows 7 causes initcluster to fail

On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 2:58 AM, Sandeep Thakkar <
sandeep(dot)thakkar(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 9:26 PM, David Fleischhauer <dgfleisch(at)gmail(dot)com>wrote:
>
>> I have added my comments inline as well:
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 1:35 AM, Sandeep Thakkar <
>> sandeep(dot)thakkar(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi David
>>>
>>> Thanks for checking and reporting this. Before we proceed, we would like
>>> some more information. Please see the comments inline.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 11:00 PM, david fleischhauer <
>>> dgfleisch(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have noted two bugs dealing with permissions with the EnterpriseDB
>>>> one-click installer. Both are similar cases:
>>>>
>>>
>>>> 1. Permissions are not given to the PostgreSQL bin directory. If I
>>>> try to install postgres on a drive with limited permissions (for my test,
>>>> only the 'Administrators' group had permissions), I get an error saying
>>>> "libintl-8.dll" is missing. That file is located in the postgres bin
>>>> directory. The issue is that your initcluster.vbs script only gives
>>>> permissions for the data directory and the parent directories of the data
>>>> directory. In order for postgres to install correctly, permissions need to
>>>> be added for the bin directory.
>>>>
>>>
>>> initcluster.vbs is supposed to deal only with the cluster directory and
>>> it's permissions. Could you list the ACL on the E:\ drive please? Command
>>> line output will do. (icacls E:\)
>>>
>>
>> E:\>icacls E:\
>> E:\ BUILTIN\Administrators:(OI)(CI)(F)
>>
>> Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files
>>
>> I understand your reasoning that initcluster.vbs should only deal
>> with permissions related to the data directory, but in order to create the
>> data cluster, you need to run initdb which is in the bin directory. I am
>> assuming my issue is related to the initdb command using dll libraries in
>> the bin directory that it cannot find because the current logged in user
>> does not have read rights to the bin directory. Giving read rights to the
>> bin directory before running initcluster.vbs fixes my issue. This issue
>> affects the default GUI installer too. The GUI installer never sets
>> permissions for the bin directory. One thing to note, all of my testing
>> has been done with a data directory that is not a sibling of the bin
>> directory. I do not think this is necessary to reproduce the problem but I
>> have done that to ensure the icacls commands on the data directory does not
>> interfere with the permissions of the bin directory and mask the problem
>> somehow.
>>
>>>
>>>>
>>> You mean your installation location and the data directory location was
> on different drives? Or just the different paths in E:\?
>

They can be on different drive if you want them to be, or they can just be
on different paths in the same directory. For instance:

Postgres Bin Dir: E:\dir\PostgreSQL\9.2\bin
Postgres Data Dir: E:\dir\data

the point is to get a situation where initcluster.vbs does not give
permissions to bin directory's parent (i.e. E:\dir\PostgreSQL\9.2).
initcluster.vbs would only give permissions to that directory if the data
dir is a sibling of the bin directory (i.e. E:\dir\PostgreSQL\9.2\data)

Here is a list of steps to follow to recreate the issue:

1. Empty out your E:\ drive so that there is nothing left in it.
2. Right-click on the E:\ drive in an explorer window and click
"Properties"
3. Click on the "Security" tab
4. Click "Edit..."
5. Click "Remove" for all "Group or User Names" except for "Administrators
(<cpuname>\Administrators)". If Administrators is not listed,, add it.
6. Click "Apply" and close out of all windows
7. Double click on the postgres installer =>
postgresql-9.2.5-1-windows-x64.exe. Make sure the installer is version
9.2.5 or later
8. When prompted for the installation directory, type in:
E:\dir\PostgreSQL\9.2\
9. When prompted for the data directory, type in: E:\dir\data
10. Answer all the other questions. The installation should fail due to a
libintl-8.dll file not being found (issue #1). The file should be located
in the postgres bin directory
11. Uninstall PostgreSQL 9.2
12. Repeat steps 1-6
13. Run the following commands:
mkdir "E:\dir\PostgreSQL\9.2\"
icacls "E:\dir\PostgreSQL\9.2\" /grant "NT
AUTHORITY\NetworkService":"(OI)(CI)RX"
icacls "E:\dir\PostgreSQL\9.2\" /grant "<logged-in
user>":"(OI)(CI)RX"
14. Repeat steps 7-10. The installation should fail again, but give you a
different error (issue #2).
15. Repeat steps 2 and 3. You should only see "Administrators
(<cpuname>\Administrators)" under "Group or User Names". Notice that no
permissions were granted for the "NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService" or the
logged in user. If you go to "E:\dir" and look at its security tab under
properties, you will see the logged in user present under "Group or User
Names", so the icacls command succeeded for "E:\dir".

Now go into your temp directory and look at install-postgresql.log. You
will see the following error:

The database cluster will be initialized with locale "English_United
States.1252".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

fixing permissions on existing directory E:/dir/data ... ok
creating subdirectories ... initdb: could not create directory
"E:/dir": File exists
initdb: removing contents of data directory "E:/dir/data"

Called Die(Failed to initialise the database cluster with initdb)...
Failed to initialise the database cluster with initdb

You will also see a little bit further up:

Executing icacls to ensure the <logged-in user> account can read the
path E:
Executing batch file 'radAC52112.bat'...
processed file: E:
Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files

Which leads you to believe it correctly gave permissions to the E: drive,
but as we confirmed earlier, it did not. If you follow these steps,
hopefully you will be able to recreate my issues.

>
>>>> 2. Permissions are not properly given to the PostgreSQL data
>>>> directory's root drive in PostgreSQL version 9.2.5 and up. In PostgreSQL
>>>> 9.2.4 there is a comment in the initcluster.vbs script saying:
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, In 9.2.5, initcluster script has undergone some changes because lot
>>> of people did not want the initcluster to change the permissions on the
>>> complete parent path of the data directory as icacls would take a lot of
>>> time to do this if that path contains huge number of files. Hence, from
>>> 9.2.5, by default the initcluster will change the permissions of just the
>>> 'data' directory. If user wants the ACL to be edited on the complete path,
>>> then he can do it with a new command line option "--enable_acledit 1".
>>>
>>
>> Yeah, the new flag is a good idea and changing the script is ok, its just
>> when it was changed, a really weird corner case that was explicitly handled
>> before is no longer being handled.
>>
>
> I executed the following command:
> icacls "E:" /grant "NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService":(NP)(RX)
>
> and this command worked fine. I used the double quotes around the drive
> and it does not end with slash. So, my guess is that the comment in the
> script is not relevant anymore? and the issue#2 also appears because of the
> permissions?
>

If you open up a cmd windows and type icacls "E:" /grant "NT
AUTHORITY\NetworkService":(NP)(RX), it will pass and grant you the correct
permissions. How to get the error is to remove all permissions from the
drive except for the administrators group and run the DoCmd(strCmd) method
in VB. Here is the method for reference:

' Execute a command
Function DoCmd(strCmd)
Dim objBatchFile
Set objBatchFile = objTempFolder.CreateTextFile(strBatchFile, True)
objBatchFile.WriteLine "@ECHO OFF"
objBatchFile.WriteLine strCmd & " > """ & strOutputFile & """ 2>&1"
objBatchFile.WriteLine "EXIT /B %ERRORLEVEL%"
objBatchFile.Close
WScript.Echo " Executing batch file '" & strBatchFile & "'..."
DoCmd = objShell.Run(objTempFolder.Path & "\" & strBatchFile, 0,
True)
If objFso.FileExists(objTempFolder.Path & "\" & strBatchFile) =
True Then
objFso.DeleteFile objTempFolder.Path & "\" & strBatchFile, True
Else
WScript.Echo " Batch file '" & strBatchFile & "' does not
exist..."
End If
If objFso.FileExists(strOutputFile) = True Then
Dim objOutputFile
Set objOutputFile = objFso.OpenTextFile(strOutputFile,
ForReading)
WScript.Echo " " & objOutputFile.ReadAll
objOutputFile.Close
objFso.DeleteFile strOutputFile, True
Else
WScript.Echo " Output file does not exists..."
End If
End Function

It first creates a batch file and writes three lines to it:

@echo off
icacls ...
EXIT /B %ERRORLEVEL%

then it calls:

DoCmd = objShell.Run(objTempFolder.Path & "\" & strBatchFile, 0, True)

if you pass in 'icacls "E:" /grant "NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService":(NP)(RX)'
to the DoCmd with an empty E:\ drive and the correct permissions, you will
see that the icacls command is executed and outputs that the command
passes. However, if you go back and look at the permissions on the E:\
drive, you will see that the permissions actually did not get set. I
believe this is an issue with vb itself as the icacls command should not
pass when it obviously is failing.

>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>> ' Drive letter must not be surrounded by double-quotes and ends
>>>> with slash (\)
>>>> ' "icacls" fails on the drives with (NP) flag
>>>>
>>>> In version 9.2.5, the initcluster.vbs script has been changed and the
>>>> above corner case is not taken care of. Again, to reproduce this issue, I
>>>> set the E drive of my machine to only give permissions to the
>>>> 'Administrators' group and my E drive was completely empty. I also had to
>>>> fixed issue #1 to get this issue to pop up. The error I am getting from
>>>> the logfile is:
>>>>
>>>> The database cluster will be initialized with locale
>>>> "English_United States.1252".
>>>> The default text search configuration will be set to "english".
>>>>
>>>> fixing permissions on existing directory E:/dir/data ... ok
>>>> creating subdirectories ... initdb: could not create directory
>>>> "E:/dir": File exists
>>>> initdb: removing contents of data directory "E:/dir/data"
>>>>
>>>> Called Die(Failed to initialise the database cluster with initdb)...
>>>> Failed to initialise the database cluster with initdb
>>>>
>>>> Here are the slight differences between the icacls command to grant
>>>> permissions to the root drive in 9.2.4 and 9.2.5:
>>>>
>>>> 9.2.4: icacls E:\ /grant ...
>>>> 9.2.5: icacls "E:" /grant ...
>>>>
>>>> As your comment shows, having quotes around 'E:' and also not including
>>>> the slash will cause an issue, both of which are not taken care of in the
>>>> 9.2.5 icacls command.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Sure. Will look into this. You ran into this issue during the
>>> installation? Or when you run the initcluster script manually?
>>>
>>>
>> I can reproduce this issue both ways. If you run the GUI installer
>> with the E: drive completely empty and with the administrators group as the
>> only group with permissions as I have given in the 'icacls E:\' command,
>> you will first run into issue #1. To get issue #2, what I have done is
>> explicitly create the postgres install directory if it does not exist and
>> set read and write permissions on the directory. I do this before running
>> the installer.
>>
>> I can run the same exact icacls command initcluster.vbs runs, and it
>> passes with flying colors (for both 9.2.4 and 9.2.5). I even have saved
>> off the radxxxx.bat file and have run that and it still passes with flying
>> colors. The issue crops up when running the batch file within vb. Oddly
>> enough, if I run the vb script a second time (not through the installer),
>> it will give the correct permissions. So I think there is a bug in vb that
>> initcluster.vbs is exploiting with the 'icacls "E:" ...' command. I have
>> created a vb script that only has the doCmd(...) method in it and I pass in
>> my own icacls command and I still get this issue.
>>
>>>
>>>> Hopefully I have clearly stated the issues. If these issues have not
>>>> been reported and there are any issues understanding what I wrote, feel
>>>> free to reply to this email.
>>>>
>>>> thanks,
>>>> David
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Sandeep Thakkar
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Sandeep Thakkar
>
>