Date: Wed, 20 May 2015 19:31:58 -0300
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@2ndquadrant.com>
To: Michael Banck <mbanck@gmx.net>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>,
 Volker =?iso-8859-1?Q?A=DFmann?= <volker.assmann@gmail.com>,
 Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>,
 Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>,
 "pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org" <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Disabling trust/ident authentication configure option
Message-ID: <20150520223158.GL5885@postgresql.org>
References: 
 <WM!3b761876ad683334d7afacc13949867067da229b8b4a89a6384ebd101a9ce056b35e6732803f2295acef5787aadcb6e2!@asav-1.01.com>
 <55596375.7070601@agliodbs.com>
 <CAJBpAdzUeVqJ1R+0V_Eg8+Z0HdrHYq7HHx+a4q1BT9-h9Yvoiw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CB1A1AB6-B345-4ED7-A705-D87E4DC99E11@gmail.com>
 <CAJBpAdzH3pMTFfBE+dYd+OytVJXR2XF=ESQ7TG6syjB1suh2ZQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <WM!22b0c9d0d605588edea2c700c71c4e0b51033b37a1185be38d4160d6de08c76eba51fd2754a9d1446b4cfb3fccceb9ce!@asav-2.01.com>
 <555CC5DE.3050707@agliodbs.com>
 <20150520175916.GB5885@postgresql.org>
 <23809.1432145430@sss.pgh.pa.us>
 <20150520221704.GA11196@raptor.chemicalconnection.dyndns.org>
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Michael Banck wrote:
> On Wed, May 20, 2015 at 02:10:30PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> > One reason why it would not be, if it's a build-time decision,
> > is that it's quite unlikely that any popular packagers would build
> > that way.  So this would only be applicable to custom-built binaries,
> > which is a pretty small class of users to begin with.
> 
> There might be appliance vendors who ship PostgreSQL along with their
> product.  Then, they decide they want to use the pristine tarballs for
> reproducibility and accountability.  If done right, they could publish
> their set of configure options and a build-id or whatever, and 3rd 
> parties could verify the binaries they ship have not been tampered
> with[1].  Granted, they could also just publish the patch for those 3rd
> parties to apply as well, but that sounds slightly inelegant.

I don't think you can mix "elegance" and "appliance vendor" in the same
sentence with a straight face, so while I agree that in theory this
might be true, in reality this functionality would seldom be used for
this.

> The other set of users I could think of are those who, for whatever
> reason, tend to always compile PostgreSQL from source for their
> company/organization.  Maybe they have internal rules that requires a
> custom installation prefix for all their servers or whatever. Due to
> procedural requirements, or just the unwillingness to carry deltas, they
> absolutely want to use the pristine tarballs as well but would be very
> happy to get rid of some of the authentication methods.

Right.  That's the set of users that Josh B says is only comprised of
Volker (the OP).

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services


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