global\pg_auth

On Tuesday 05 January 2010 09:37:57 black light wrote:

Hi,
Why PG uses a flat file (global\pg_auth) for md5 authentication!? Is it
forced to do it instead of accessing relevant table is system catalog?

It does not anymore:
http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb?p=postgresql.git;a=commit;h=7b0a92a0b6f5ef41f1547381cbd0e2604ec2bf87

The reason earlier was that the authentication check was done before a backend
was started...

Andres