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To: Carlos Hasan <chasan@acepta.com>
Cc: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: PQerrorMessage() bug? 
In-reply-to: <1096330311.4871.11.camel@debian.acepta.com> 
References: <1096330311.4871.11.camel@debian.acepta.com>
Comments: In-reply-to Carlos Hasan <chasan@acepta.com>
	message dated "Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:11:51 -0400"
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 19:13:30 -0400
Message-ID: <15825.1096672410@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Carlos Hasan <chasan@acepta.com> writes:
> I think that found a weird bug when PQconnectdb() fails because I
> haven't started PostgreSQL. The function PQerrorMessage() returns the
> message:

> could not connect to server: <<<weird garbage here>>
> Is the server running locally and accepting
> connections on Unix domain socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.

> Looks like the error message wasn't properly formatted.

I think this is the known problem with GNU libc having a weird
(non-SUS-spec) strerror_r.  There's a workaround in the 8.0 sources
but it doesn't look like anyone's backported it to 7.4.  You can
drop the pqStrerror() code from CVS tip src/port/thread.c into 7.4
if you like (this will not work in general because 7.4 configure doesn't
set STRERROR_R_INT, but it should work for the case you want).

			regards, tom lane