Re: pg_authid.rolpassword format (was Re: Password identifiers, protocol aging and SCRAM protocol)

On 01/17/2017 11:51 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> On 1/3/17 9:09 AM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
>> Since not everyone agrees with this approach, I split this patch into
>> two. The first patch refactors things, replacing the isMD5() function
>> with get_password_type(), without changing the representation of
>> pg_authid.rolpassword. That is hopefully uncontroversial.
>
> I have checked these patches.
>
> The refactoring in the first patch seems sensible.  As Michael pointed
> out, there is still a reference to "plain:" in the first patch.

Fixed.

> The commit message needs to be updated, because the function
> plain_crypt_verify() was already added in a previous patch.

Fixed.

> I'm not fond of this kind of coding
>
>     password = encrypt_password(password_type, stmt->role, password);
>
> where the 'password' variable has a different meaning before and after.

Added a new local variable to avoid the confusion.

> This error message might be a mistake:
>
>     elog(ERROR, "unrecognized password type conversion");

I rephrased the error as "cannot encrypt password to requested type", 
and added a comment explaining that it cannot happen. I hope that 
helped, I'm not sure why you thought it might've been a mistake.

> I think some pieces from the second patch could be included in the first
> patch, e.g., the parts for passwordcheck.c and user.c.

I refrained from doing that for now. It would've changed the 
passwordcheck hook API in an incompatible way. Breaking the API 
explicitly would be a good thing, if we added the "plain:" prefix, 
because modules would need to deal with the prefix anyway. But until we 
do that, better to not break the API for no good reason.

>> And the second
>> patch adds the "plain:" prefix, which not everyone agrees on.
>
> The code also gets a little bit dubious, as it introduces an "unknown"
> password type, which is sometimes treated as plaintext and sometimes as
> an error.  I think this is going be messy.
>
> I would skip this patch for now at least.  Too much controversy, and we
> don't know how the rest of the patches for this feature will look like
> to be able to know if it's worth it.

Ok, I'll drop the second patch for now. I committed the first patch 
after fixing the things you and Michael pointed out. Thanks for the review!

- Heikki