Re: pgsql: Prevent running pg_basebackup as root

Ian Barwick <ian.barwick@2ndquadrant.com>

From: Ian Barwick <ian.barwick@2ndquadrant.com>
To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
Cc: Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz>, Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net>, pgsql-committers <pgsql-committers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2020-02-07T02:23:56Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
On 2020/02/07 11:07, Andres Freund wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 2020-02-06 13:02:07 +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>> I agree with Stephen that this seems to be misguided, and my vote is
>> to revert.
> 
> +1. I honestly don't think we should increase the number of "root
> disallowed" tools unless actually necessary.
> 
> Maybe that's looking too far into the future, but I'd like to see
> improvements to pg_basebackup that make it integrate with root requiring
> tooling, to do more efficient base backups. E.g. having pg_basebackup
> handle start/stop backup and WAL handling, but do the actual backup of
> the data via a snapshot mechanism (yes, one needs start/stop backup in
> the general case, for multiple FSs), would be nice.
> 
> Btw, I think it's good form in a discussion like this to CC the original
> author. I'll also add a reference to this discussion from the -hackers
> thread.

Thanks for the notification.

Points raised upthread seem reasonable enough; to be honest I was expecting
this patch to hang around a bit longer anway, because (as so often) there's
some aspect which wouldn't have occurred to me.


Regards

Ian Barwick

-- 
Ian Barwick                   https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
  PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services



Commits

  1. Revert "Prevent running pg_basebackup as root"

  2. Prevent running pg_basebackup as root