namespace isn't necessarily first in the search path (there could be implicit
schemas ahead of it). Examples are
test=# set search_path TO s1;
test=# create view pg_timezone_names as select * from pg_timezone_names();
ERROR: "pg_timezone_names" is already a view
test=# create table pg_class (f1 int primary key);
ERROR: permission denied: "pg_class" is a system catalog
You'd expect these commands to create the requested objects in s1, since
names beginning with pg_ aren't supposed to be reserved anymore. What is
happening is that we create the requested base table and then execute
additional commands (here, CREATE RULE or CREATE INDEX), and that code is
passed the same RangeVar that was in the original command. Since that
RangeVar has schemaname = NULL, the secondary commands think they should do a
path search, and that means they find system catalogs that are implicitly in
front of s1 in the search path.
This is perilously close to being a security hole: if the secondary command
failed to apply a permission check then it'd be possible for unprivileged
users to make schema modifications to system catalogs. But as far as I can
find, there is no code path in which a check doesn't occur. Which makes it
just a weird corner-case bug for people who are silly enough to want to
name their tables the same as a system catalog.
The relevant code has changed quite a bit since 8.2, which means this patch
wouldn't work as-is in the back branches. Since it's a corner case no one
has reported from the field, I'm not going to bother trying to back-patch.
Tom Lane
862861ee77