These reference pages still claimed that you have to be superuser to create
a database or schema owned by a different role. That was true before 8.1,
but it was changed in commits aa1110624c and
f91370cd2f to allow assignment of ownership
to any role you are a member of. However, at the time we were thinking of
that primarily as a change to the ALTER OWNER rules, so the need to touch
these two CREATE ref pages got missed.
The syntax "su -c 'command' username" is not accepted by all versions of
su, for example not OpenBSD's. More portable is "su username -c
'command'". So change runtime.sgml to recommend that syntax. Also,
add a -D switch to the OpenBSD example script, for consistency with other
examples. Per Denis Lapshin and Gábor Hidvégi.
Somewhere along the line, somebody decided to remove all trace of this
notation from the documentation text. It was still in the command syntax
synopses, or at least some of them, but with no indication what it meant.
This will not do, as evidenced by the confusion apparent in bug #7543;
even if the notation is now unnecessary, people will find it in legacy
SQL code and need to know what it does.
The documentation mentioned setting autovacuum_freeze_max_age to
"its maximum allowed value of a little less than two billion".
This led to a post asking about the exact maximum allowed value,
which is precisely two billion, not "a little less".
Based on question by Radovan Jablonovsky. Backpatch to 8.3.
libxslt offers the ability to read and write both files and URLs through
stylesheet commands, thus allowing unprivileged database users to both read
and write data with the privileges of the database server. Disable that
through proper use of libxslt's security options.
Also, remove xslt_process()'s ability to fetch documents and stylesheets
from external files/URLs. While this was a documented "feature", it was
long regarded as a terrible idea. The fix for CVE-2012-3489 broke that
capability, and rather than expend effort on trying to fix it, we're just
going to summarily remove it.
While the ability to write as well as read makes this security hole
considerably worse than CVE-2012-3489, the problem is mitigated by the fact
that xslt_process() is not available unless contrib/xml2 is installed,
and the longstanding warnings about security risks from that should have
discouraged prudent DBAs from installing it in security-exposed databases.
Reported and fixed by Peter Eisentraut.
Security: CVE-2012-3488
This backatches Heikki's patch in 140a4fbf1a
to make sure the documentation on the website gets updated, since
we're regularly receiving complains about this link.
In backup.sgml, point out that you need to be using the logging collector
if you want to log messages from a failing archive_command script. (This
is an oversimplification, in that it will work without the collector as
long as you're not sending postmaster stderr to /dev/null; but it seems
like a good idea to encourage use of the collector to avoid problems
with multiple processes concurrently scribbling on one file.)
In config.sgml, do some wordsmithing of logging_collector discussion.
Per bug #6518 from Janning Vygen
This check was overlooked when we added function execute permissions to the
system years ago. For an ordinary trigger function it's not a big deal,
since trigger functions execute with the permissions of the table owner,
so they couldn't do anything the user issuing the CREATE TRIGGER couldn't
have done anyway. However, if a trigger function is SECURITY DEFINER,
that is not the case. The lack of checking would allow another user to
install it on his own table and then invoke it with, essentially, forged
input data; which the trigger function is unlikely to realize, so it might
do something undesirable, for instance insert false entries in an audit log
table.
Reported by Dinesh Kumar, patch by Robert Haas
Security: CVE-2012-0866
PGresults used to be read-only from the application's viewpoint, but now
that we've exposed various functions that allow modification of a PGresult,
that sweeping statement is no longer accurate. Noted by Dmitriy Igrishin.
The correct information appears in the text, so just remove the statement
in the table, where it did not fit nicely anyway. (Curiously, the correct
info has been there much longer than the erroneous table entry.)
Resolves problem noted by Daniele Varrazzo.
In HEAD and 9.1, also do a bit of wordsmithing on other text on the page.
The documentation neglected to explain its behavior in a script file
(it only ends execution of the script, not psql as a whole), and failed
to mention the long form \quit either.
This mode still exists for backwards compatibility, making
sslmode=require the same as sslmode=verify-ca when the file is present,
but not causing an error when it isn't.
Per bug 6189, reported by Srinivas Aji
This example wasn't updated when we changed the behavior of bpcharlen()
in 8.0, nor when we changed the number of parameters taken by the bpchar()
cast function in 7.3. Per report from lsliang.
This is a dangerous example to provide because on machines with GNU cp,
it will silently do the wrong thing and risk archive corruption. Worse,
during the 9.0 cycle somebody "improved" the discussion by removing the
warning that used to be there about that, and instead leaving the
impression that the command would work as desired on most Unixen.
It doesn't. Try to rectify the damage by providing an example that is safe
most everywhere, and then noting that you can try cp -i if you want but
you'd better test that.
In back-patching this to all supported branches, I also added an example
command for Windows, which wasn't provided before 9.0.
The documentation of the columns collection_type_identifier and
dtd_identifier was wrong. This effectively reverts commits
8e1ccad519 and
57352df66d and updates the name
array_type_identifier (the name in SQL:1999) to
collection_type_identifier.
closes bug #5926
Apparently sane-looking penalty code might return small negative values,
for example because of roundoff error. This will confuse places like
gistchoose(). Prevent problems by clamping negative penalty values to
zero. (Just to be really sure, I also made it force NaNs to zero.)
Back-patch to all supported branches.
Alexander Korotkov
On closer inspection, that two-element initcond value seems to have been
a little white lie to avoid explaining the full behavior of float8_accum.
But if people are going to expect the examples to be exactly correct,
I suppose we'd better explain. Per comment from Thom Brown.
Recent versions of the Linux system header files cause xlogdefs.h to
believe that open_datasync should be the default sync method, whereas
formerly fdatasync was the default on Linux. open_datasync is a bad
choice, first because it doesn't actually outperform fdatasync (in fact
the reverse), and second because we try to use O_DIRECT with it, causing
failures on certain filesystems (e.g., ext4 with data=journal option).
This part of the patch is largely per a proposal from Marti Raudsepp.
More extensive changes are likely to follow in HEAD, but this is as much
change as we want to back-patch.
Also clean up confusing code and incorrect documentation surrounding the
fsync_writethrough option. Those changes shouldn't result in any actual
behavioral change, but I chose to back-patch them anyway to keep the
branches looking similar in this area.
In 9.0 and HEAD, also do some copy-editing on the WAL Reliability
documentation section.
Back-patch to all supported branches, since any of them might get used
on modern Linux versions.
The GRANT reference page failed to mention that the USAGE privilege
allows modifying associated user mappings, although this was already
documented on the CREATE/ALTER/DROP USER MAPPING pages.
In particular, we are now more explicit about the fact that you may need
wal_sync_method=fsync_writethrough for crash-safety on some platforms,
including MaxOS X. There's also now an explicit caution against assuming
that the default setting of wal_sync_method is either crash-safe or best
for performance.
There are numerous methods by which a Perl or Tcl function can subvert
the behavior of another such function executed later; for example, by
redefining standard functions or operators called by the target function.
If the target function is SECURITY DEFINER, or is called by such a
function, this means that any ordinary SQL user with Perl or Tcl language
usage rights can do essentially anything with the privileges of the target
function's owner.
To close this security hole, create a separate Perl or Tcl interpreter for
each SQL userid under which plperl or pltcl functions are executed within
a session. However, all plperlu or pltclu functions run within a session
still share a single interpreter, since they all execute at the trust
level of a database superuser anyway.
Note: this change results in a functionality loss when libperl has been
built without the "multiplicity" option: it's no longer possible to call
plperl functions under different userids in one session, since such a
libperl can't support multiple interpreters in one process. However, such
a libperl already failed to support concurrent use of plperl and plperlu,
so it's likely that few people use such versions with Postgres.
Security: CVE-2010-3433
parameter against server cert's CN field) to succeed in the case where
both host and hostaddr are specified. As with the existing precedents
for Kerberos, GSSAPI, SSPI, it is the calling application's responsibility
that host and hostaddr match up --- we just use the host name as given.
Per bug #5559 from Christopher Head.
In passing, make the error handling and messages for the no-host-name-given
failure more consistent among these four cases, and correct a lie in the
documentation: we don't attempt to reverse-lookup host from hostaddr
if host is missing.
Back-patch to 8.4 where SSL cert verification was introduced.
formats for geometric types. Per bug #5536 from Jon Strait, and my own
testing.
Back-patch to all supported branches, since this doco has been wrong right
along -- we certainly haven't changed the I/O behavior of these types in
many years.
In HEAD, emit a warning when an operator named => is defined.
In both HEAD and the backbranches (except in 8.2, where contrib
modules do not have documentation), document that hstore's text =>
text operator may be removed in a future release, and encourage the
use of the hstore(text, text) function instead. This function only
exists in HEAD (previously, it was called tconvert), so backpatch
it back to 8.2, when hstore was added. Per discussion.
to be initialized with proper values. Affected parameters are
fillfactor, analyze_threshold, and analyze_scale_factor.
Especially uninitialized fillfactor caused inefficient page usage
because we built a StdRdOptions struct in which fillfactor is zero
if any reloption is set for the toast table.
In addition, we disallow toast.autovacuum_analyze_threshold and
toast.autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor because we didn't actually
support them; they are always ignored.
Report by Rumko on pgsql-bugs on 12 May 2010.
Analysis by Tom Lane and Alvaro Herrera. Patch by me.
Backpatch to 8.4.
that is a regular table or view owned by a superuser. This prevents a
trojan horse attack whereby any unprivileged SQL user could create such a
table and insert code into it that would then get executed in other users'
sessions whenever they call pltcl functions.
Worse yet, because the code was automatically loaded into both the "normal"
and "safe" interpreters at first use, the attacker could execute unrestricted
Tcl code in the "normal" interpreter without there being any pltclu functions
anywhere, or indeed anyone else using pltcl at all: installing pltcl is
sufficient to open the hole. Change the initialization logic so that the
"unknown" code is only loaded into an interpreter when the interpreter is
first really used. (That doesn't add any additional security in this
particular context, but it seems a prudent change, and anyway the former
behavior violated the principle of least astonishment.)
Security: CVE-2010-1170
fundamentally insecure. Instead apply an opmask to the whole interpreter that
imposes restrictions on unsafe operations. These restrictions are much harder
to subvert than is Safe.pm, since there is no container to be broken out of.
Backported to release 7.4.
In releases 7.4, 8.0 and 8.1 this also includes the necessary backporting of
the two interpreters model for plperl and plperlu adopted in release 8.2.
In versions 8.0 and up, the use of Perl's POSIX module to undo its locale
mangling on Windows has become insecure with these changes, so it is
replaced by our own routine, which is also faster.
Nice side effects of the changes include that it is now possible to use perl's
"strict" pragma in a natural way in plperl, and that perl's $a and
$b variables now work as expected in sort routines, and that function
compilation is significantly faster.
Tim Bunce and Andrew Dunstan, with reviews from Alex Hunsaker and
Alexey Klyukin.
Security: CVE-2010-1169
This change was previously committed to HEAD, but the consensus seems to be
in favor of back-patching it. I'm only backpatching as far as 8.3.X, however,
because it's not clear to me to what degree this advice applies to older
branches, and in any case our first advice to anyone attempting to tune those
versions is likely to be "upgrade".
