Re: initdb recommendations

On 5/24/19 9:01 AM, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> * Jonathan S. Katz (jkatz@postgresql.org) wrote:
>> On 5/24/19 8:33 AM, Stephen Frost wrote:
>>> We need to provide better documentation about how to get from md5 to
>>> SCRAM, in my view.  I'm not sure where that should live, exactly.
>>> I really wish we had put more effort into making the migration easy to
>>> do over a period of time, and we might actually have to do that before
>>> the packagers would be willing to make that change.
>>
>> +100...I think we should do this regardless, and I was already thinking
>> of writing something up around it. I would even suggest that we have
>> said password upgrade documentation backpatched to 10.
> 
> Not sure that backpatching is necessary, but I'm not actively against
> it.

Well, for someone who wants to cut over and has to manually guide the
process, a guide will help in absence of new development.

> 
> What I was really getting at though was the ability to have multiple
> authenticator tokens active concurrently (eg: md5 AND SCRAM), with an
> ability to use either one (idk, md5_or_scram auth method?), and then
> automatically set both on password change until everything is using
> SCRAM and then remove all MD5 stuff.
> 
> Or something along those lines.  In other words, I'm talking about new
> development work to ease the migration (while also providing some oft
> asked about features, like the ability to do rolling passwords...).

Cool, I have been thinking about a similar feature as well to help ease
the transition (and fwiw was going to suggest it in my previous email).

I think an interim step at least is to document how we can at least help
ease the transition.

Thanks,

Jonathan