I've completed the patch to fix the protocol and authentication issues I
was discussing a couple of weeks ago. The particular changes are:
- the protocol has a version number
- network byte order is used throughout
- the pg_hba.conf file is used to specify what method is used to
authenticate a frontend (either password, ident, trust, reject, krb4
or krb5)
- support for multiplexed backends is removed
- appropriate changes to man pages
- the -a switch to many programs to specify an authentication service
no longer has any effect
- the libpq.so version number has changed to 1.1
The new backend still supports the old protocol so old interfaces won't
break.
o A new patch that contains the following changes:
-- The pg_pwd file is now cached in the postmaster's memory.
-- pg_pwd is reloaded when the postmaster detects a flag file creat()'ed
by a backend.
-- qsort() is used to sort loaded password entries, and bsearch() is
is used to find entries in the pg_pwd cache.
-- backends now copy the pg_user relation to pg_pwd.pid, and then
rename the temp file to be pg_pwd.
-- The delimiter for pg_pwd has been changed to a tab character.
Subject: [HACKERS] libpq/pqcomm stuff and Solaris byte order
I decided to go ahead with the required changes since no one else seems
to. I don't guarantee that it is perfect but with these changes the
package actually compiles. While I was at it I added to the Sparc
Solaris header to define the byte order. Note that NetBSD sets this
in the system headers so it wasn't required there.
In particular, someone may want to check whether I removed the correct
84 lines from backend/libpq/pqcomprim.c.
Subject: [HACKERS] Patch for io routines
I am currently trying to improve on the front-backend communication
routines; and noticed that lots of code are duplicated for libpq and
the backend. This is a first patch that tries to share code between
the two, more to follow.
mjl
Subject: [HACKERS] password authentication
This patch adds support for plaintext password authentication. To use
it, you add a line like
host all 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 password pg_pwd.conf
to your pg_hba.conf, where 'pg_pwd.conf' is the name of a file containing
the usernames and password hashes in the format of the first two fields
of a Unix /etc/passwd file. (Of course, you can use a specific database
name or IP instead.)
Then, to connect with a password through libpq, you use the PQconnectdb()
function, specifying the "password=" tag in the connect string and also
adding the tag "authtype=password".
I also added a command-line switch '-u' to psql that tells it to prompt
for a username and password and use password authentication.
I'm able to get through a 'make' of the backend with no errors except
the occasional 'might not be initialized error', which is nothing major,
just annoying.
Have a few patches from D'Arcy to incorporate, but am waiting until I can
get a clean compile first, which I'm hoping to have before bed, or sometime
tomorrow.
