initdb --pwfile /dev/zero - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Andres Freund
Subject initdb --pwfile /dev/zero
Date
Msg-id 20210917174644.7pjxxinc5je23djh@alap3.anarazel.de
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: initdb --pwfile /dev/zero
List pgsql-hackers
Hi,

A colleague tried PG 14 internally and it failed during cluster creation, when
using the PGDG rpm packages. A bit of debugging shows that the problem is
that the packaging script specifies the password using --pwfile /dev/zero.

In 14+ this turns out to lead to an endless loop in pg_get_line_append().

The --pwfile /dev/zero was added in
https://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=pgrpms.git;a=commitdiff;h=8ca418709ef49a1781f0ea8e6166b139106135ff

Devrim, what was the goal? Even in 13 this didn't achieve anything?


While I don't think passing /dev/zero is a good idea (it mostly seems to
circumvent ""password file \"%s\" is empty", without achieving anything, given
the password will be empty). I think we still ought to make pg_get_line() a
bit more resilient against '\0'?


Greetings,

Andres Freund



pgsql-hackers by date:

Previous
From: Alvaro Herrera
Date:
Subject: Re: prevent immature WAL streaming
Next
From: Tom Lane
Date:
Subject: Re: initdb --pwfile /dev/zero