Re: Non-superuser subscription owners

> On Jan 30, 2023, at 1:29 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I feel like you're accusing me of removing functionality that has
> never existed. A subscription doesn't run as the subscription creator.
> It runs as the subscription owner. If you or anyone else had added the
> capability for it to run as someone other than the subscription owner,
> I certainly wouldn't be trying to back that capability out as part of
> this patch, and because there isn't, I'm not proposing to add that as
> part of this patch. I don't see how that makes me guilty of squashing
> anything together. The current state of affairs, where the run-as user
> is taken from pg_subscription.subowner, the same field that is updated
> by ALTER SUBSCRIPTION ... OWNER TO, is the result of your work, not
> anything that I have done or am proposing to do.
> 
> I also *emphatically* disagree with the idea that this undoes what you
> worked on. My patch would be *impossible* without your work. Prior to
> your work, the run-as user was always, basically, the superuser, and
> so the idea of allowing anyone other than a superuser to execute
> CREATE SUBSCRIPTION would be flat-out nuts. Because of your work,
> that's now a thing that we may be able to reasonably allow, if we can
> work through the remaining issues. So I'm grateful to you, and also
> sorry to hear that you're annoyed with me. But I still don't think
> that the fact that the division you want doesn't exist is somehow my
> fault.
> 
> I'm kind of curious why you *didn't* make this distinction at the time
> that you were did the other work in this area. Maybe my memory is
> playing tricks on me again, but I seem to recall talking about the
> idea with you at the time, and I seem to recall thinking that it
> sounded like an OK idea. I seem to vaguely recall us discussing
> hazards like: well, what if replication causes code to get executed as
> the subscription owner that that causes something bad to happen? But I
> think the only way that happens is if they put triggers on the tables
> that are being replicated, which is their choice, and they can avoid
> installing problematic code there if they want. I think there might
> have been some other scenarios, too, but I just can't remember. In any
> case, I don't think the idea is completely without merit. I think it
> could very well be something that we want to have for one reason or
> another. But I don't currently understand exactly what those reasons
> are, and I don't see any reason why one patch should both split owner
> from run-as user and also allow the owner to be a non-superuser. That
> seems like two different efforts to me.

I don't have a concrete problem with your patch, and wouldn't object if you committed it.  My concerns were more how you were phrasing things, but it seems not worth any additional conversation, because it's probably a distinction without a difference.

—
Mark Dilger
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