Re: system administration functions with hardcoded superuser checks

On 12/18/12 12:09 PM, Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> There are some system administration functions that have hardcoded
> superuser checks, specifically:
> 
> pg_reload_conf
> pg_rotate_logfile
> pg_read_file
> pg_read_file_all
> pg_read_binary_file
> pg_read_binary_file_all
> pg_stat_file
> pg_ls_dir
> 
> Some of these are useful in monitoring or maintenance tools, and the
> hardcoded superuser checks require that these tools run with maximum
> privileges.  Couldn't we just install these functions without default
> privileges and allow users to grant privileges as necessary?

This is still being debated, but just for the heck of it, here is a
patch for how this implementation would look like.