On Mar 2, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Bill Moran wrote:
In response to dlivesay@xxxxxxxxx:
Quoting Bill Moran <wmoran@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
In response to dlivesay@xxxxxxxxx:
I've been using PostgreSQL on Mac OS X for a few years, but now I'm
trying to
install it on a WIndows computer so someone else can use it, and
I'm getting
the following error message when I try to advance beyond the
"Service
Configuration" screen in the installer:
"Your local 'Administrators' group contains 'Authenticated Users'.
This is a common configuration error that causes security
issues. For this
reason, Postgr"
That's it. Apparently the whole error message doesn't fit in the
error dialog,
but there's no way to resize the window.
Does anybody know what the rest of this message might be? Bonus
points if you
can explain what it means, and especially if you can explain
what to
do about
it.
I suspect this is more a WIndows problem than a PostgreSQL
problem, but I'm
afraid I don't know that much about Windows. I'm a Mac/Unix kind of
guy, and I
try to avoid using WIndows whenever possible because this kind of
stuff always
happens.
I don't know 100%, but it looks like the "authenticated users"
group is a
member of the "administrators" group. This means that anyone who
logs in
to the workstation is an administrator. It's a complete lack of
security,
but it's also very common (in my experience) for Windows
workstations.
I'm guessing that the PG installer is being anal and refusing to
allow you
to install on such a poorly configured system, but that part I
don't know.
My suggestion would be to fix the users/groups on the Windows
system so there
is a special administrative user, then remove authenticated users
from the
administrator group.
When I saw this error I immediately went to the "Local Users and
Groups" control
panel to see if I could figure out what the heck it was talking
about, and I
swear there is no group called "Authenticated Users". That's
what's so
baffling
about this, apart from the incomplete error message.
Ahh ... IIRC, this isn't a _real_ group, it's kind of a pseudo-
group that
Windows evaluates on the fly to distinguish between users who have
authenticated, and people who are using the system without having
logged
in (the fact that such a thing is possible at all is disturbing ...)
What's really disturbing is that someone in our IT department set up
this machine, and its policies are so screwed up I can't even install
a dbms.
It's a shame -- I get the impression that the rest of that error
message
would help you fix the issue, but I don't remember what you can do
about
it. Probably something to do with group policy, or some other setting
in the security realm.
I'm kind of surprised that this installer could make it through a
test cycle with an error message that's not legible. Is there any
chance this error might be logged somewhere?
