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To: Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
cc: dz@cs.unitn.it (Massimo Dal Zotto), hackers@postgreSQL.org
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] flock patch breaks things here
In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 30 Aug 1998 08:19:52 -0400 (EDT)
<199808301219.IAA08821@candle.pha.pa.us>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 11:23:38 -0400
Message-ID: <15786.904490618@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Status: RO
Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> Can't we just have configure check for flock(). Another idea is to
> create a 'pid' file in the pgsql/data/base directory, and do a kill -0
> to see if it is stil running before removing the lock.
The latter approach is what I was going to suggest. Writing a pid file
would be a fine idea anyway --- for one thing, it makes it a lot easier
to write a "kill the postmaster" script. Given that the postmaster
should write a pid file, a new postmaster should look for an existing
pid file, and try to do a kill(pid, 0) on the number contained therein.
If this doesn't return an error, then you figure there is already a
postmaster running, complain, and exit. Otherwise you figure you is it,
(re)write the pid file and away you go. Then pqcomm.c can just
unconditionally delete any old file that's in the way of making the
pipe.
The pidfile checking and creation probably ought to go in postmaster.c,
not down inside pqcomm.c. I never liked the fact that a critical
interlock function was being done by a low-level library that one might
not even want to invoke (if all your clients are using TCP, opening up
the Unix-domain socket is a waste of time, no?).
BTW, there is another problem with relying on flock on the socket file
for this purpose: it opens up a hole for a denial-of-service attack.
Anyone who can write the file can flock it. (We already had a problem
with DOS via creating a dummy file at /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432, but it would
be harder to spot the culprit with an flock-based interference.)
regards, tom lane
From owner-pgsql-hackers@hub.org Sun Aug 30 12:27:41 1998
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Sun, 30 Aug 1998 12:50:55 -0400 (EDT)
To: Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it>
cc: hackers@postgreSQL.org (PostgreSQL Hackers)
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] flock patch breaks things here
In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 30 Aug 1998 18:21:41 +0200 (MET DST)
<199808301621.SAA05993@boogie.cs.unitn.it>
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 12:50:55 -0400
Message-ID: <16092.904495855@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Sender: owner-pgsql-hackers@hub.org
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO
Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it> writes:
> In my opinion the socket and the pidfile should be created in a
> directory owned by postgres, for example /tmp/.Pgsql-unix, like does X.
The pidfile belongs at the top level of the database directory (eg,
/usr/local/pgsql/data/postmaster.pid), because what it actually
represents is that there is a postmaster running *for that database
group*.
If you want to support multiple database sets on one machine (which I
do), then the interlock has to be per database directory. Putting the
pidfile into a common directory would mean we'd have to invent some
kind of pidfile naming convention to keep multiple postmasters from
tromping on each other. This is unnecessarily complex.
I agree with you that putting the socket file into a less easily munged
directory than /tmp would be a good idea for security. But that's a
separate issue. On machines that understand stickybits for directories,
the security hole is not really very big.
At this point, the fact that /tmp/.s.PGSQL.port# is the socket path is
effectively a version-independent aspect of the FE/BE protocol, and so
we can't change it without breaking old applications. I'm not sure that
that's worth the security improvement.
What I'd like to see someday is a postmaster command line switch to tell
it to use *only* TCP connections and not create a Unix socket at all.
That hasn't been possible so far, because we were relying on the socket
file to provide a safety interlock against starting multiple
postmasters. But an interlock using a pidfile would be much better.
(Look around; *every* other Unix daemon I know of that wants to ensure
that there's only one of it uses a pidfile interlock. Not file locking.
There's a reason why that's the well-trodden path.)
regards, tom lane
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Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1998 16:21:28 -0300 (ADT)
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To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
cc: Massimo Dal Zotto <dz@cs.unitn.it>,
PostgreSQL Hackers <hackers@postgreSQL.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] flock patch breaks things here
From owner-pgsql-hackers@hub.org Sun Aug 30 22:41:10 1998
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To: The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org>
cc: PostgreSQL Hackers <hackers@postgreSQL.org>
Subject: Re: [HACKERS] flock patch breaks things here
In-reply-to: Your message of Sun, 30 Aug 1998 16:21:28 -0300 (ADT)
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