pgadmin is changing pgpass.conf

On 16/09/2009 10:55, Howard Cole wrote:

Hi All,

I have been having a few problems with my password file recently,
causing my scheduled pg_dump to fail. The problem is that the
pgpass.conf file keeps changing. Eventually I narrowed it down to using
pgadmin. Every time I start pgadmin, it changes the contents of my
pgpass file, even though I do not store my password in pgadmin.

This only seems to have become a problem since installing 8.4 and
associated version of pgadmin.

Is this the desired behaviour or is it a bug?

It's the desired behaviour, and is described in the pgAdmin docs. As I
remember there was also a discussion (on the pgadmin-support list I
think) when this feature was added, on the merits or otherwise of
storing passwords in plain text on disk.

Ray.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland
rod@iol.ie
Galway Cathedral Recitals: http://www.galwaycathedral.org/recitals
------------------------------------------------------------------

Raymond O'Donnell wrote:

On 16/09/2009 10:55, Howard Cole wrote:

Hi All,

I have been having a few problems with my password file recently,
causing my scheduled pg_dump to fail. The problem is that the
pgpass.conf file keeps changing. Eventually I narrowed it down to using
pgadmin. Every time I start pgadmin, it changes the contents of my
pgpass file, even though I do not store my password in pgadmin.

This only seems to have become a problem since installing 8.4 and
associated version of pgadmin.

Is this the desired behaviour or is it a bug?

It's the desired behaviour, and is described in the pgAdmin docs. As I
remember there was also a discussion (on the pgadmin-support list I
think) when this feature was added, on the merits or otherwise of
storing passwords in plain text on disk.

Ray.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland
rod@iol.ie
Galway Cathedral Recitals: http://www.galwaycathedral.org/recitals
------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Ray,

Thanks for the update. Unfortunately this behaviour has the side effect
of deleting passwords that I have set up in the file manually for other
applications (namely the backup), which runs under the same user
account. I guess I'll just have to come up with an alternative.

Howard.
www.selestial.com

On 18/09/2009 16:07, Howard Cole wrote:

Thanks for the update. Unfortunately this behaviour has the side effect
of deleting passwords that I have set up in the file manually for other
applications (namely the backup), which runs under the same user
account. I guess I'll just have to come up with an alternative.

Hi Howard,

I'm afraid that's about the size of it. It's probably a good idea to
have a separate account for executing the backup in any case.

Ray.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Raymond O'Donnell, Director of Music, Galway Cathedral, Ireland
rod@iol.ie
Galway Cathedral Recitals: http://www.galwaycathedral.org/recitals
------------------------------------------------------------------

Raymond O'Donnell wrote:

On 18/09/2009 16:07, Howard Cole wrote:

Thanks for the update. Unfortunately this behaviour has the side effect
of deleting passwords that I have set up in the file manually for other
applications (namely the backup), which runs under the same user
account. I guess I'll just have to come up with an alternative.

Hi Howard,

I'm afraid that's about the size of it. It's probably a good idea to
have a separate account for executing the backup in any case.

Surely pgadmin preserves any existing entries in pgpass.conf?

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd

Richard Huxton wrote:

Raymond O'Donnell wrote:

On 18/09/2009 16:07, Howard Cole wrote:

Thanks for the update. Unfortunately this behaviour has the side effect
of deleting passwords that I have set up in the file manually for other
applications (namely the backup), which runs under the same user
account. I guess I'll just have to come up with an alternative.

Hi Howard,

I'm afraid that's about the size of it. It's probably a good idea to
have a separate account for executing the backup in any case.

Surely pgadmin preserves any existing entries in pgpass.conf?

Not in this case. There are originally two entries in pgpass.conf - one
for server localhost and one for server 127.0.0.1 - the reasoning behind
this is that when the backup runs as a scheduled task it sometimes seems
to prefer one format to the other. However, when I open PGAdmin, one of
the entries disappears. Perhaps it resolves the address and thinks they
are the same entries?

Anyway, the problem was resolved in the script that executes pg_dump,
forcing it to use localhost or 127.0.0.1 using the -h option. As long as
the -h ties in with what pgadmin writes to pgpass, there are no
authentication problems.

Howard Cole
www.selestial.com

Howard Cole wrote:

Not in this case. There are originally two entries in pgpass.conf -
one for server localhost and one for server 127.0.0.1 - the
reasoning behind this is that when the backup runs as a scheduled
task it sometimes seems to prefer one format to the other. However,
when I open PGAdmin, one of the entries disappears. Perhaps it
resolves the address and thinks they are the same entries?

I think you should file this as a pgadmin bug -- see the pgadmin lists
for that.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support