From: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
To: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
Cc: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: improving user.c error messages
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2023 10:55:54 +0100
Message-ID: <abf97f0d-79b4-217c-2ea8-d081648d9a6d@enterprisedb.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20230220225852.GA3940888@nathanxps13>
References: <20230127000936.GA1998073@nathanxps13>
<20230127183119.e5jtyh4g2md57ctb@alvherre.pgsql>
<20230127231507.GA2221340@nathanxps13>
<20230207201009.GA450353@nathanxps13>
<e1bbef97-ed13-f6ad-8d21-b2ebc251394b@enterprisedb.com>
<20230220190210.GA3481922@nathanxps13>
<20230220225852.GA3940888@nathanxps13>
On 20.02.23 23:58, Nathan Bossart wrote:
>>> Similarly -- this is an existing issue but we might as well look at it -- in
>>> something like
>>>
>>> must be superuser or a role with privileges of the
>>> pg_write_server_files role
>>>
>>> the phrase "a role with the privileges of that other role" seems ambiguous.
>>> Doesn't it really mean you must be a member of that role?
>>
>> Membership alone is not sufficient. You must also inherit the privileges
>> of the role via the INHERIT option. I thought about making this something
>> like
>>
>> must have the INHERIT option on role %s
>>
>> but I'm not sure that's accurate either. That wording makes it sound lіke
>> you need to be granted membership to the role directly WITH INHERIT OPTION,
>> but what you really need is membership, direct or indirect, with an INHERIT
>> chain up to the role in question. However, it looks like "must have the
>> ADMIN option on role %s" is used to mean something similar, so perhaps I am
>> overthinking it.
>
> For now, I've reworded these as "must inherit privileges of".
I don't have a good mental model of all this role inheritance,
personally, but I fear that this change makes the messages more jargony
and less clear. Maybe the original wording was good enough.
A couple of other thoughts:
"admin option" is sort of a natural language term, I think, so we don't
need to parametrize it as "%s option". Also, there are no other
"options" in this context, I think.
A general thought: It seems we currently don't have any error messages
that address the user like "You must do this". Do we want to go there?
Should we try for a more impersonal wording like
"You must have the %s attribute to create roles."
"Current user must have the %s attribute to create roles."
"%s attribute is required to create roles."
By the way, I'm not sure what the separation between 0001 and 0002 is
supposed to be.
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To: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Cc: peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com, nathandbossart@gmail.com, alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org, tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us, robertmhaas@gmail.com
Subject: Re: improving user.c error messages
In-Reply-To: <abf97f0d-79b4-217c-2ea8-d081648d9a6d@enterprisedb.com>
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