Use the phraseology "ISO 8601 week-numbering year" in place of just
"ISO year", and make related adjustments to other terminology.
The point of this change is that it seems some people see "ISO year"
and think "standard year", whereupon they're surprised when constructs
like to_char(..., "IYYY-MM-DD") produce nonsensical results. Perhaps
hanging a few more adjectives on it will discourage them from jumping
to false conclusions. I put in an explicit warning against that
specific usage, too, though the main point is to discourage people
who haven't read this far down the page.
In passing fix some nearby markup and terminology inconsistencies.
For simple boolean variables such as ON_ERROR_STOP, psql has for a long
time recognized variant spellings of "on" and "off" (such as "1"/"0"),
and it also made a point of warning you if you'd misspelled the setting.
But these conveniences did not exist for other keyword-valued variables.
In particular, though ECHO_HIDDEN and ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK include "on" and
"off" as possible values, none of the alternative spellings for those were
recognized; and to make matters worse the code would just silently assume
"on" was meant for any unrecognized spelling. Several people have reported
getting bitten by this, so let's fix it. In detail, this patch:
* Allows all spellings recognized by ParseVariableBool() for ECHO_HIDDEN
and ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK.
* Reports a warning for unrecognized values for COMP_KEYWORD_CASE, ECHO,
ECHO_HIDDEN, HISTCONTROL, ON_ERROR_ROLLBACK, and VERBOSITY.
* Recognizes all values for all these variables case-insensitively;
previously there was a mishmash of case-sensitive and case-insensitive
behaviors.
Back-patch to all supported branches. There is a small risk of breaking
existing scripts that were accidentally failing to malfunction; but the
consensus is that the chance of detecting real problems and preventing
future mistakes outweighs this.
Document the long forms of \H \i \ir \o \p \r \w ... apparently, we have
a long and dishonorable history of leaving out the unabbreviated names of
psql backslash commands.
Avoid saying "Unix shell"; we can just say "shell" with equal clarity,
and not leave Windows users wondering whether the feature works for them.
Improve consistency of documentation of \g \o \w metacommands. There's
no reason to use slightly different wording or markup for each one.
Explain that you have to use "VARIADIC ARRAY[]" to pass an empty array
to a variadic parameter position. This was already implicit in the text
but it seems better to spell it out.
Per a suggestion from David Johnston, though I didn't use his proposed
wording. Back-patch to all supported branches.
The possibility that constant subexpressions of a CASE might be evaluated
at planning time was touched on in 9.17.1 (CASE expressions), but it really
ought to be explained in 4.2.14 (Expression Evaluation Rules) which is the
primary discussion of such topics. Add text and an example there, and
revise the <note> under CASE to link there.
Back-patch to all supported branches, since it's acted like this for a
long time (though 9.2+ is probably worse because of its more aggressive
use of constant-folding via replanning of nominally-prepared statements).
Pre-9.4, also back-patch text added in commit 0ce627d4 about CASE versus
aggregate functions.
Tom Lane and David Johnston, per discussion of bug #12273.
Use SSPI authentication to allow connections exclusively from the OS
user that launched the test suite. This closes on Windows the
vulnerability that commit be76a6d39e
closed on other platforms. Users of "make installcheck" or custom test
harnesses can run "pg_regress --config-auth=DATADIR" to activate the
same authentication configuration that "make check" would use.
Back-patch to 9.0 (all supported versions).
Security: CVE-2014-0067
In bug #12000, Andreas Kunert complained that the documentation was
misleading in saying "FROM T1 CROSS JOIN T2 is equivalent to FROM T1, T2".
That's correct as far as it goes, but the equivalence doesn't hold when
you consider three or more tables, since JOIN binds more tightly than
comma. I added a <note> to explain this, and ended up rearranging some
of the existing text so that the note would make sense in context.
In passing, rewrite the description of JOIN USING, which was unnecessarily
vague, and hadn't been helped any by somebody's reliance on markup as a
substitute for clear writing. (Mostly this involved reintroducing a
concrete example that was unaccountably removed by commit 032f3b7e166cfa28.)
Back-patch to all supported branches.
pgp_sym_encrypt's option is spelled "sess-key", not "enable-session-key".
Spotted by Jeff Janes.
In passing, improve a comment in pgp-pgsql.c to make it clearer that
the debugging options are intentionally undocumented.
Up to now, PG has assumed that any given timezone abbreviation (such as
"EDT") represents a constant GMT offset in the usage of any particular
region; we had a way to configure what that offset was, but not for it
to be changeable over time. But, as with most things horological, this
view of the world is too simplistic: there are numerous regions that have
at one time or another switched to a different GMT offset but kept using
the same timezone abbreviation. Almost the entire Russian Federation did
that a few years ago, and later this month they're going to do it again.
And there are similar examples all over the world.
To cope with this, invent the notion of a "dynamic timezone abbreviation",
which is one that is referenced to a particular underlying timezone
(as defined in the IANA timezone database) and means whatever it currently
means in that zone. For zones that use or have used daylight-savings time,
the standard and DST abbreviations continue to have the property that you
can specify standard or DST time and get that time offset whether or not
DST was theoretically in effect at the time. However, the abbreviations
mean what they meant at the time in question (or most recently before that
time) rather than being absolutely fixed.
The standard abbreviation-list files have been changed to use this behavior
for abbreviations that have actually varied in meaning since 1970. The
old simple-numeric definitions are kept for abbreviations that have not
changed, since they are a bit faster to resolve.
While this is clearly a new feature, it seems necessary to back-patch it
into all active branches, because otherwise use of Russian zone
abbreviations is going to become even more problematic than it already was.
This change supersedes the changes in commit 513d06ded et al to modify the
fixed meanings of the Russian abbreviations; since we've not shipped that
yet, this will avoid an undesirably incompatible (not to mention incorrect)
change in behavior for timestamps between 2011 and 2014.
This patch makes some cosmetic changes in ecpglib to keep its usage of
datetime lookup tables as similar as possible to the backend code, but
doesn't do anything about the increasingly obsolete set of timezone
abbreviation definitions that are hard-wired into ecpglib. Whatever we
do about that will likely not be appropriate material for back-patching.
Also, a potential free() of a garbage pointer after an out-of-memory
failure in ecpglib has been fixed.
This patch also fixes pre-existing bugs in DetermineTimeZoneOffset() that
caused it to produce unexpected results near a timezone transition, if
both the "before" and "after" states are marked as standard time. We'd
only ever thought about or tested transitions between standard and DST
time, but that's not what's happening when a zone simply redefines their
base GMT offset.
In passing, update the SGML documentation to refer to the Olson/zoneinfo/
zic timezone database as the "IANA" database, since it's now being
maintained under the auspices of IANA.
When there are cost-delay-related storage options set for a table,
trying to make that table participate in the autovacuum cost-limit
balancing algorithm produces undesirable results: instead of using the
configured values, the global values are always used,
as illustrated by Mark Kirkwood in
http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/52FACF15.8020507@catalyst.net.nz
Since the mechanism is already complicated, just disable it for those
cases rather than trying to make it cope. There are undesirable
side-effects from this too, namely that the total I/O impact on the
system will be higher whenever such tables are vacuumed. However, this
is seen as less harmful than slowing down vacuum, because that would
cause bloat to accumulate. Anyway, in the new system it is possible to
tweak options to get the precise behavior one wants, whereas with the
previous system one was simply hosed.
This has been broken forever, so backpatch to all supported branches.
This might affect systems where cost_limit and cost_delay have been set
for individual tables.
The documentation used to suggest setting this parameter with ALTER ROLE
SET, but that never worked, so replace it with a working suggestion.
Reported-by: Kyotaro Horiguchi <horiguchi.kyotaro@lab.ntt.co.jp>
psql's \s (print command history) doesn't work at all with recent libedit
versions when printing to the terminal, because libedit tries to do an
fchmod() on the target file which will fail if the target is /dev/tty.
(We'd already noted this in the context of the target being /dev/null.)
Even before that, it didn't work pleasantly, because libedit likes to
encode the command history file (to ensure successful reloading), which
renders it nigh unreadable, not to mention significantly different-looking
depending on exactly which libedit version you have. So let's forget using
write_history() for this purpose, and instead print the data ourselves,
using logic similar to that used to iterate over the history for newline
encoding/decoding purposes.
While we're at it, insert the ability to use the pager when \s is printing
to the terminal. This has been an acknowledged shortcoming of \s for many
years, so while you could argue it's not exactly a back-patchable bug fix
it still seems like a good improvement. Anyone who's seriously annoyed
at this can use "\s /dev/tty" or local equivalent to get the old behavior.
Experimentation with this showed that the history iteration logic was
actually rather broken when used with libedit. It turns out that with
libedit you have to use previous_history() not next_history() to advance
to more recent history entries. The easiest and most robust fix for this
seems to be to make a run-time test to verify which function to call.
We had not noticed this because libedit doesn't really need the newline
encoding logic: its own encoding ensures that command entries containing
newlines are reloaded correctly (unlike libreadline). So the effective
behavior with recent libedits was that only the oldest history entry got
newline-encoded or newline-decoded. However, because of yet other bugs in
history_set_pos(), some old versions of libedit allowed the existing loop
logic to reach entries besides the oldest, which means there may be libedit
~/.psql_history files out there containing encoded newlines in more than
just the oldest entry. To ensure we can reload such files, it seems
appropriate to back-patch this fix, even though that will result in some
incompatibility with older psql versions (ie, multiline history entries
written by a psql with this fix will look corrupted to a psql without it,
if its libedit is reasonably up to date).
Stepan Rutz and Tom Lane
The old claim is from my commit d06ebdb8d3 of
2000-07-17, but it seems to have been a plain old thinko; sum(float4) has
been distinct from sum(float8) since Berkeley days. Noted by KaiGai Kohei.
While at it, mention the existence of sum(money), which is also of
embarrassingly ancient vintage.
Errors detected using Topy (https://github.com/intgr/topy), all
changes verified by hand and some manual tweaks added.
Marti Raudsepp
Individual changes backpatched, where applicable, as far as 9.0.
The old text explained what happened if we didn't have working int64
arithmetic. Since that case has been explicitly rejected by configure
since 8.4.3, documenting it in the 9.x branches can only produce confusion.
FreeBSD hasn't made any use of kern.ipc.semmap since 1.1, and newer
releases reject attempts to set it altogether; so stop recommending
that it be adjusted. Per bug #11161.
Back-patch to all supported branches. Before 9.3, also incorporate
commit 7a42dff47, which touches the same text and for some reason
was not back-patched at the time.
Specifically this commit updates forkname_to_number() so that the HINT
message includes "init" fork, and also adds the description of "init" fork
into pg_relation_size() document.
This is a part of the commit 2d00190495
which has fixed the same oversight in master and 9.4. Back-patch to
9.1 where "init" fork was added.
The initialization fork was added in 9.1, but has not been taken into
consideration in documents of get_raw_page function in pageinspect and
storage layout. This commit fixes those oversights.
get_raw_page can read not only a table but also an index, etc. So it
should be documented that the function can read any relation. This commit
also fixes the document of pageinspect that way.
Back-patch to 9.1 where those oversights existed.
Vik Fearing, review by MauMau
The user documentation was vague and not entirely accurate about how
we treat domain inputs for ambiguous operators/functions. Clarify
that, and add an example and some commentary. Per a recent question
from Adam Mackler.
It's acted like this ever since we added domains, so back-patch
to all supported branches.
unix_socket_directories was introduced in 9.3, but the document
in older versions wrongly have mentioned it. This commit replaces
it with the correct older name unix_socket_directory.
This is applied to only 9.2 and older supported versions.
Guillaume Lelarge
Break the list of available options into an <itemizedlist> instead of
inline sentences. This is mostly motivated by wanting to ensure that the
cross-references to the FSM and VM docs don't cross page boundaries in PDF
format; but it seems to me to read more easily this way anyway. I took the
liberty of editorializing a bit further while at it.
Per complaint from Magnus about 9.0.18 docs not building in A4 format.
Patch all active branches so we don't get blind-sided by this particular
issue again in future.
~/.pgpass is a sound choice everywhere, and "peer" authentication is
safe on every platform it supports. Cease to recommend "trust"
authentication, the safety of which is deeply configuration-specific.
Back-patch to 9.0, where pg_upgrade was introduced.
7380b63 changed log_filename so that epoch was not appended to it
when no format specifier is given. But the example of CSV log file name
with epoch still left in log_filename document. This commit removes
such obsolete example.
This commit also documents the defaults of log_directory and
log_filename.
Backpatch to all supported versions.
Christoph Berg
By using curly braces, the template had specified that one of
"NOT DEFERRABLE", "INITIALLY IMMEDIATE", or "INITIALLY DEFERRED"
was required on any CREATE TRIGGER statement, which is not
accurate. Change to square brackets makes that optional.
Backpatch to 9.1, where the error was introduced.
Any OS user able to access the socket can connect as the bootstrap
superuser and proceed to execute arbitrary code as the OS user running
the test. Protect against that by placing the socket in a temporary,
mode-0700 subdirectory of /tmp. The pg_regress-based test suites and
the pg_upgrade test suite were vulnerable; the $(prove_check)-based test
suites were already secure. Back-patch to 8.4 (all supported versions).
The hazard remains wherever the temporary cluster accepts TCP
connections, notably on Windows.
As a convenient side effect, this lets testing proceed smoothly in
builds that override DEFAULT_PGSOCKET_DIR. Popular non-default values
like /var/run/postgresql are often unwritable to the build user.
Security: CVE-2014-0067
Back in 8.3, we installed permissions checks in these functions (see
commits 8bc225e799 and cc26599b72). But we forgot to document that
anywhere in the user-facing docs; it did get mentioned in the 8.3 release
notes, but nobody's looking at that any more. Per gripe from Suya Huang.
The advice to join to pg_prepared_xacts via the transaction column was not
updated when the transaction column was replaced by virtualtransaction.
Since it's not quite obvious how to do that join, give an explicit example.
For consistency also give an example for the adjacent case of joining to
pg_stat_activity. And link-ify the view references too, just because we
can. Per bug #9840 from Alexey Bashtanov.
Michael Paquier and Tom Lane
It's been 16 bytes, not 12, for ages. This was fixed in passing in HEAD
(commit 146604ec), but as a factual error it should have been back-patched.
Per gripe from Tatsuhito Kasahara.
Any OS user able to access the socket can connect as the bootstrap
superuser and in turn execute arbitrary code as the OS user running the
test. Protect against that by placing the socket in the temporary data
directory, which has mode 0700 thanks to initdb. Back-patch to 8.4 (all
supported versions). The hazard remains wherever the temporary cluster
accepts TCP connections, notably on Windows.
Attempts to run "make check" from a directory with a long name will now
fail. An alternative not sharing that problem was to place the socket
in a subdirectory of /tmp, but that is only secure if /tmp is sticky.
The PG_REGRESS_SOCK_DIR environment variable is available as a
workaround when testing from long directory paths.
As a convenient side effect, this lets testing proceed smoothly in
builds that override DEFAULT_PGSOCKET_DIR. Popular non-default values
like /var/run/postgresql are often unwritable to the build user.
Security: CVE-2014-0067
Since the temporary server started by "make check" uses "trust"
authentication, another user on the same machine could connect to it
as database superuser, and then potentially exploit the privileges of
the operating-system user who started the tests. We should change
the testing procedures to prevent this risk; but discussion is required
about the best way to do that, as well as more testing than is practical
for an undisclosed security problem. Besides, the same issue probably
affects some user-written test harnesses. So for the moment, we'll just
warn people against using "make check" when there are untrusted users on
the same machine.
In passing, remove some ancient advice that suggested making the
regression testing subtree world-writable if you'd built as root.
That looks dangerously insecure in modern contexts, and anyway we
should not be encouraging people to build Postgres as root.
Security: CVE-2014-0067
The primary role of PL validators is to be called implicitly during
CREATE FUNCTION, but they are also normal functions that a user can call
explicitly. Add a permissions check to each validator to ensure that a
user cannot use explicit validator calls to achieve things he could not
otherwise achieve. Back-patch to 8.4 (all supported versions).
Non-core procedural language extensions ought to make the same two-line
change to their own validators.
Andres Freund, reviewed by Tom Lane and Noah Misch.
Security: CVE-2014-0061
Granting a role without ADMIN OPTION is supposed to prevent the grantee
from adding or removing members from the granted role. Issuing SET ROLE
before the GRANT bypassed that, because the role itself had an implicit
right to add or remove members. Plug that hole by recognizing that
implicit right only when the session user matches the current role.
Additionally, do not recognize it during a security-restricted operation
or during execution of a SECURITY DEFINER function. The restriction on
SECURITY DEFINER is not security-critical. However, it seems best for a
user testing his own SECURITY DEFINER function to see the same behavior
others will see. Back-patch to 8.4 (all supported versions).
The SQL standards do not conflate roles and users as PostgreSQL does;
only SQL roles have members, and only SQL users initiate sessions. An
application using PostgreSQL users and roles as SQL users and roles will
never attempt to grant membership in the role that is the session user,
so the implicit right to add or remove members will never arise.
The security impact was mostly that a role member could revoke access
from others, contrary to the wishes of his own grantor. Unapproved role
member additions are less notable, because the member can still largely
achieve that by creating a view or a SECURITY DEFINER function.
Reviewed by Andres Freund and Tom Lane. Reported, independently, by
Jonas Sundman and Noah Misch.
Security: CVE-2014-0060
Bruce Momjian