Michael Schmidt wrote: > Fellow PostgreSQL fans, Last year there was a pretty lengthy discussion > (Tom Lane offered a lot of insights) on this list about deprecating > the PGPASSWORD environmental variable. I understand the security issues > here very well. However, up through version 8.1, it has been easy to > use pg_dump and pg_restore from other applications (PHP, Java, etc.) > by capturing the Password prompt on stderr and sending the password on > stdin. No more. Now, this interaction is done on low-level I/O data > streams. Also, it appears from the documentation that the PGPASSFILE > environmental variable has been deprecated for pg_dump and pg_restore. > It appears the only way these utilities can run from a script or other > application is to ensure that the user specified in the command-line > has a .pgpass file. > > I would like to ask that we return to outputting the Password prompt > on stderr and accepting password input on stdin. Here are the reasons. Unlikely. > 1. I don't see that this would pose a major security risk. In fact, > in applications where the user enters the password for each session, > the password need never be saved to disk, which seems a definite > security advantage. Some folks have noted that .pgpass is a plain text > file, hence it could be vulnerable. This doesn't work if the command actually is taking data from stdin. > 2. PostgreSQL has a tradition of respecting generally accepted > standards. The use of high-level input/output is a standard for many > programming languages. It is _not_ typical to read a password from stdin. I am sure you can find some tools that do this, but most do not. > 3. PostgreSQL has a tradition of cross-platform compatibility. Use > of high-level input/output allows cross-platform applications (e.g., > Java) to interact with PostgreSQL in a straightforward and standardized > fashion. > 4. Low level input/output is considerably more difficult and less > reliable for other applications to access and work with. The change is to read from /dev/tty. -- Bruce Momjian bruce@xxxxxxxxxx EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +
