The PostgreSQL limitations section of the documents mentioned the limit
on the number of columns that can exist in a table. Users might be
surprised to find that there's also a limit on the number of columns that
can exist in a targetlist. Users may experience restrictions which
surprise them if they happened to select a large number of columns from
several tables with many columns. Here we document that there is a
limitation on this and mention what that limit actually is.
Wording proposal by Alvaro Herrera
Reported-by: Vladimir Sitnikov
Author: Dave Crammer
Reviewed-by: Tom Lane
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAB=Je-E18aTYpNqje4mT0iEADpeGLSzwUvo3H9kRRuDdsNo4aQ@mail.gmail.com
Backpatch-through: 12, where the limitations section was added
runtime.sgml contains a passing reference to the minimum server
version that pg_dump[all] can dump from. That was 7.0 for many
years, but when 64f3524e2 raised it to 8.0, we missed updating this
bit. Then when 30e7c175b raised it to 9.2, we missed it again.
Given that track record, I'm not too hopeful that we'll remember
to fix this in future changes ... but for now, make the docs match
reality in each branch.
Noted by Daniel Westermann.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/GV0P278MB041917EB3E2FE8704B5AE2C6D2DC9@GV0P278MB0419.CHEP278.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM
The information generated when track_activities is accessible to
superusers, roles with the privileges of pg_read_all_stats, as well as
roles one has the privileges of. The original text did not outline the
last point, while the change done in ac1ae47 was unclear about the
second point.
Per discussion with Nathan Bossart.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20220521185743.GA886636@nathanxps13
Backpatch-through: 10
Foreign tables can be partitioned, but previous documentation commits
left the syntax synopsis both incomplete and incorrect.
Justin Pryzby and Amit Langote
Discussion: http://postgr.es/m/20220521130922.GX19626@telsasoft.com
The description of track_activities mentioned that it is visible to
superusers and that the information related to the current session can
be seen, without telling about pg_read_all_stats. Roles that are
granted the privileges of pg_read_all_stats can also see this
information, so mention it in the docs.
Author: Ian Barwick
Reviewed-by: Nathan Bossart
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAB8KJ=jhPyYFu-A5r-ZGP+Ax715mUKsMxAGcEQ9Cx_mBAmrPow@mail.gmail.com
Backpatch-through: 10
The documentation didn't specify the name of the per-user service file
on Windows, and extrapolating from the pattern used for other config
files gave the wrong answer. The fact that it isn't consistent with the
others sure seems like a bug, but it's far too late to change that now;
we'd just penalize people who worked it out in the past. So, simply
document the true state of affairs.
In passing, fix some gratuitous differences between the discussions
of the service file and the password file.
Julien Rouhaud, per question from Dominique Devienne.
Backpatch to all supported branches. I (tgl) also chose to back-patch
the part of commit ba356a397 that touched libpq.sgml's description of
the service file --- in hindsight, I'm not sure why I didn't do so at
the time, as it includes some fairly essential information.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAFCRh-_mdLrh8eYVzhRzu4c8bAFEBn=rwoHOmFJcQOTsCy5nig@mail.gmail.com
The current setup assumes that commands for lz4, zstd and gzip always
exist by default if not enforced by a user's environment. However,
vcpkg, as one example, installs libraries but no binaries, so this
default setup to assume that a command should always be present would
cause failures. This commit improves the detection of such external
commands as follows:
* If a ENV value is available, trust the environment/user and use it.
* If a ENV value is not available, check its execution by looking in the
current PATH, by launching a simple "$command --version" (that should be
portable enough).
** On execution failure, ignore ENV{command}.
** On execution success, set ENV{command} = "$command".
Note that this new rule applies to gzip, lz4 and zstd but not tar that
we assume will always exist. Those commands are set up in the
environment only when using bincheck and taptest. The CI includes all
those commands and I have checked that their setup is correct there. I
have also tested this change in a MSVC environment where we have none of
those commands.
While on it, remove the references to lz4 from the documentation and
vcregress.pl in ~v13. --with-lz4 has been added in v14~ so there is no
point to have this information in these older branches.
Reported-by: Andrew Dunstan
Reviewed-by: Andrew Dunstan
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/14402151-376b-a57a-6d0c-10ad12608e12@dunslane.net
Backpatch-through: 10
Google seems to like to return textsearch.html for queries about
GIN and GiST indexes, even though it's not a primary reference
for either. It seems likely that that's because those keywords
appear in the page title. Since "GIN and GiST Index Types" is
not a very apposite title for this material anyway, rename the
section in hopes of stopping that.
Also provide explicit links to the GIN and GiST chapters, to help
anyone who finds their way to this page regardless.
Per gripe from Jan Piotrowski. Back-patch to supported branches.
(Unfortunately Google is likely to continue returning the 9.1
version of this page, but improving that situation is a matter
for the www team.)
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/164978902252.1276550.9330175733459697101@wrigleys.postgresql.org
It's misleading to call the data directory the "synchronized data
directory" when discussing a crash scenario when using pg_rewind's
--no-sync option. Here we just remove the word "synchronized" to avoid
any possible confusion.
Author: Justin Pryzby
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20220411020336.GB26620@telsasoft.com
Backpatch-through: 12, where --no-sync was added
When dealing with partitioned tables, counters for partitioned tables
are not updated when modifying child tables. This means autoanalyze may
not update optimizer statistics for the parent relations, which can
result in poor plans for some queries.
It's worth documenting this limitation, so that people are aware of it
and can take steps to mitigate it (e.g. by setting up a script executing
ANALYZE regularly).
Backpatch to v10. Older branches are affected too, of couse, but we no
longer maintain those.
Author: Justin Pryzby
Reviewed-by: Zhihong Yu, Tomas Vondra
Backpatch-through: 10
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20210913035409.GA10647%40telsasoft.com
If we run out of space in the checkpointer sync request queue (which is
hopefully rare on real systems, but common with very small buffer pool),
we wait for it to drain. While waiting, we should report that as a wait
event so that users know what is going on, and also handle postmaster
death, since otherwise the loop might never terminate if the
checkpointer has exited.
Back-patch to 12. Although the problem exists in earlier releases too,
the code is structured differently before 12 so I haven't gone any
further for now, in the absence of field complaints.
Reported-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Reviewed-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20220226213942.nb7uvb2pamyu26dj%40alap3.anarazel.de
ALTER ROUTINE triggers the events ddl_command_start and ddl_command_end,
and DROP ROUTINE triggers sql_drop, ddl_command_start and
ddl_command_end, but this was not mention on the matrix table.
Reported-by: Leslie Lemaire
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/164647533363.646.5802968483136493025@wrigleys.postgresql.org
Backpatch-through: 11
This change makes libpq apply the same private-key-file ownership
and permissions checks that we have used in the backend since commit
9a83564c5. Namely, that the private key can be owned by either the
current user or root (with different file permissions allowed in the
two cases). This allows system-wide management of key files, which
is just as sensible on the client side as the server, particularly
when the client is itself some application daemon.
Sync the comments about this between libpq and the backend, too.
Back-patch of a59c79564 and 50f03473e into all supported branches.
David Steele
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/f4b7bc55-97ac-9e69-7398-335e212f7743@pgmasters.net
Currently, during UPDATE, the unchanged replica identity key attributes
are not logged separately because they are getting logged as part of the
new tuple. But if they are stored externally then the untoasted values are
not getting logged as part of the new tuple and logical replication won't
be able to replicate such UPDATEs. So we need to log such attributes as
part of the old_key_tuple during UPDATE.
Reported-by: Haiying Tang
Author: Dilip Kumar and Amit Kapila
Reviewed-by: Alvaro Herrera, Haiying Tang, Andres Freund
Backpatch-through: 10
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/OS0PR01MB611342D0A92D4F4BF26C0F47FB229@OS0PR01MB6113.jpnprd01.prod.outlook.com
A very well-informed user might deduce this from what we said already,
but I'd bet against it. Lay it out explicitly.
While here, rewrite the comment about tuple routing to be more
intelligible to an average SQL user.
Per bug #17395 from Alexander Lakhin. Back-patch to v11. (The text
in this area is different in v10 and I'm not sufficiently excited
about this point to adapt the patch.)
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/17395-8c326292078d1a57@postgresql.org
With Python 3.10, configure spits out warnings about the module
distutils.sysconfig being deprecated and scheduled for removal in
Python 3.12. Change the uses in configure to use the module sysconfig
instead. The logic stays largely the same, although we have to
rely on INCLUDEPY instead of the deprecated get_python_inc function.
Note that sysconfig exists since Python 2.7, so this moves the
minimum required version up from Python 2.6 (or 2.4, before v13).
Also, sysconfig didn't exist in Python 3.1, so the minimum 3.x
version is now 3.2.
Back-patch of commit bd233bdd8 into all supported branches.
In v10, this also includes back-patching v11's beff4bb9c, primarily
because this opinion is clearly out-of-date:
While at it, get rid of the code's assumption that both the major and
minor numbers contain exactly one digit. That will foreseeably be
broken by Python 3.10 in perhaps four or five years. That's far enough
out that we probably don't need to back-patch this.
Peter Eisentraut, Tom Lane, Andres Freund
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/c74add3c-09c4-a9dd-1a03-a846e5b2fc52@enterprisedb.com
I had a brain fade in commit d32899157, and used 2:30AM as the
example timestamp for both spring-forward and fall-back cases.
But it's not actually ambiguous at all in the fall-back case,
because that transition is from 2AM to 1AM under USA rules.
Fix the example to use 1:30AM, which *is* ambiguous.
Noted while answering a question from Aleksander Alekseev.
Back-patch to all supported branches.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/2191355.1641828552@sss.pgh.pa.us
The link used in the documentation is dead, and the only options to have
an access to this part of the SQL specification are not free. Like any
other books referred, just remove the link to keep some neutrality but
keep its reference.
Reported-by: Erik Rijkers
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/989abd7d-af30-ab52-1201-bf0b4f33b872@xs4all.nl
Backpatch-through: 12
catalog/pg_class.h was stating that REPLICA_IDENTITY_INDEX with a
dropped index is equivalent to REPLICA_IDENTITY_DEFAULT. The code tells
a different story, as it is equivalent to REPLICA_IDENTITY_NOTHING.
The behavior exists since the introduction of replica identities, and
fe7fd4e even added tests for this case but I somewhat forgot to fix this
comment.
While on it, this commit reorganizes the documentation about replica
identities on the ALTER TABLE page, and a note is added about the case
of dropped indexes with REPLICA_IDENTITY_INDEX.
Author: Michael Paquier, Wei Wang
Reviewed-by: Euler Taveira
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/OS3PR01MB6275464AD0A681A0793F56879E759@OS3PR01MB6275.jpnprd01.prod.outlook.com
Backpatch-through: 10
edc2332 has introduced in vcregress.pl some control on the environment
variables LZ4, TAR and GZIP_PROGRAM to allow any TAP tests to be able
use those commands. This makes the settings more consistent with
src/Makefile.global.in, as the same default gets used for Make and MSVC
builds.
Each parameter can be changed in buildenv.pl, but as a default gets
assigned after loading buldenv.pl, it is not possible to unset any of
these, and using an empty value would not work with "||=" either. As
some environments may not have a compatible command in their PATH (tar
coming from MinGW is an issue, for one), this could break tests without
an exit path to bypass any failing test. This commit changes things so
as the default values for LZ4, TAR and GZIP_PROGRAM are assigned before
loading buildenv.pl, not after. This way, we keep the same amount of
compatibility as a GNU build with the same defaults, and it becomes
possible to unset any of those values.
While on it, this adds some documentation about those three variables in
the section dedicated to the TAP tests for MSVC.
Per discussion with Andrew Dunstan.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/YbGYe483803il3X7@paquier.xyz
Backpatch-through: 10
List types numeric and timestamptz, which don't seem to have ever been
included here. Restore bigint, which was no-doubt-accidentally deleted
in v12. Fix some errors, or at least obsolete usages (nobody declares
float arguments as "float8*" anymore, even though they might be that
under the hood). Re-alphabetize. Remove the seeming claim that this
is a complete list of built-in types.
Per question from Oskar Stenberg.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/HE1PR03MB2971DE2527ECE1E99D6C19A8F96E9@HE1PR03MB2971.eurprd03.prod.outlook.com
ssl_crl_file and ssl_crl_dir are both used to for client certificate
revocation, not server certificates. The description for the params
could be easily misread to mean the opposite however, as evidenced
by the bugreport leading to this fix. Similarly, expand sslcrl and
and sslcrldir to explicitly mention server certificates. While there
also mention sslcrldir where previously only sslcrl was discussed.
Backpatch down to v10, with the CRL dir fixes down to 14 where they
were introduced.
Author: Kyotaro Horiguchi <horikyota.ntt@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Peter Eisentraut <peter.eisentraut@enterprisedb.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20211202.135441.590555657708629486.horikyota.ntt@gmail.com
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CABWY_HCBUCjY1EJHrEGePGEaSZ5b29apgTohCyygtsqe_ySYng@mail.gmail.com
Backpatch-through: 10
Remove the confusing use of ORDER BY in an example materialized
view. It adds nothing to the example, but might encourage
people to follow bad practice. Clarify REFRESH MATERIALIZED
VIEW's note about whether view ordering is retained (it isn't).
Maciek Sakrejda
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAOtHd0D-OvrUU0C=4hX28p4BaSE1XL78BAQ0VcDaLLt8tdUzsg@mail.gmail.com
Clarify that the results of nextval and setval are not guaranteed
persistent until the calling transaction commits. Some people
seem to have drawn the opposite conclusion from the statement that
these functions are never rolled back, so re-word to avoid saying
it quite that way.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAKU4AWohO=NfM-4KiZWvdc+z3c1C9FrUBR6xnReFJ6sfy0i=Lw@mail.gmail.com
Documentation and any code paths related to VS are updated to keep the
whole consistent. Similarly to 2017 and 2019, the version of VS and the
version of nmake that we use to determine which code paths to use for
the build are still inconsistent in their own way.
Backpatch down to 10, so as buildfarm members are able to use this new
version of Visual Studio on all the stable branches supported.
Author: Hans Buschmann
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/1633101364685.39218@nidsa.net
Backpatch-through: 10
The "See also" section on the reference page for CREATE PUBLICATION
didn't match the cross references on CREATE SUBSCRIPTION and their
ALTER counterparts. Fixed by adding an xref to the CREATE and ALTER
SUBSCRIPTION pages. Backpatch down to v10 where CREATE PUBLICATION
was introduced.
Author: Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Masahiko Sawada <sawada.mshk@gmail.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAHut+PvGWd3-Ktn96c-z6uq-8TGVVP=TPOkEovkEfntoo2mRhw@mail.gmail.com
Backpatch-through: 10
protocol.sgml documented the layout for Type messages, but completely
dropped the ball otherwise, failing to explain what they are, when
they are sent, or what they're good for. While at it, do a little
copy-editing on the description of Relation messages.
In passing, adjust the comment for apply_handle_type() to make it
clearer that we choose not to do anything when receiving a Type
message, not that we think it has no use whatsoever.
Per question from Stefen Hillman.
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/CAPgW8pMknK5pup6=T4a_UG=Cz80Rgp=KONqJmTdHfaZb0RvnFg@mail.gmail.com
libpq collects up to a bufferload of data whenever it reads data from
the socket. When SSL or GSS encryption is requested during startup,
any additional data received with the server's yes-or-no reply
remained in the buffer, and would be treated as already-decrypted data
once the encryption handshake completed. Thus, a man-in-the-middle
with the ability to inject data into the TCP connection could stuff
some cleartext data into the start of a supposedly encryption-protected
database session.
This could probably be abused to inject faked responses to the
client's first few queries, although other details of libpq's behavior
make that harder than it sounds. A different line of attack is to
exfiltrate the client's password, or other sensitive data that might
be sent early in the session. That has been shown to be possible with
a server vulnerable to CVE-2021-23214.
To fix, throw a protocol-violation error if the internal buffer
is not empty after the encryption handshake.
Our thanks to Jacob Champion for reporting this problem.
Security: CVE-2021-23222
The documentation was imprecise about the starting LSN used for WAL
streaming if nothing can be found in the local archive directory
defined with the pg_receivewal command, so be more talkative on this
matter.
Extracted from a larger patch by the same author.
Author: Ronan Dunklau, Michael Paquier
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/18708360.4lzOvYHigE@aivenronan
Backpatch-through: 10
