Received: from sss.sss.pgh.pa.us (sss.pgh.pa.us [209.114.166.2]) by hub.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id TAA86359 for ; Thu, 18 Nov 1999 19:10:50 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) Received: from sss.sss.pgh.pa.us (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sss.sss.pgh.pa.us (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id TAA00302; Thu, 18 Nov 1999 19:05:07 -0500 (EST) To: "Sergio A. Kessler" cc: "pgsql-interfaces@postgreSQL.org" Subject: Re: [INTERFACES] pg_pwd In-reply-to: Your message of Thu, 18 Nov 1999 18:18:16 -0300 Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 19:05:06 -0500 Message-ID: <300.942969906@sss.pgh.pa.us> From: Tom Lane "Sergio A. Kessler" writes: > what is the funcionality of the file pg_pwd in $PG_DATA ? > (no, there is _nothing_ in the docs) That's cause you don't need to know ;-) Seriously, it's a flat-file copy of pg_shadow, used by the postmaster to do password verification. (The postmaster can't look directly at pg_shadow because it cannot participate in database operations.) See doc/TODO.detail/pg_shadow. > and why is world =writable & readable= ? > (hey, everybody, wanna know my passwd ?) It's not really a security hole because it lives inside a directory that's mode 700 (unless you tampered with the default permissions setup). However, I agree it oughta be changed anyway. The real issue here is that backend-side COPY writes files with mode 666, which seems a strange and dangerous choice to me. But someone once thought it was a good idea, because COPY goes out of its way to make that happen. Does anyone have a clue why? regards, tom lane