Re: I'd love to know what the rest of this error message is. - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Mar 2, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Bill Moran wrote:

> In response to dlivesay@covad.net:
>
>> Quoting Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>:
>>
>>> In response to dlivesay@covad.net:
>>>
>>>> I've been using PostgreSQL on Mac OS X for a few years, but now I'm
>>>> trying to
>>>> install it on a WIndows computer so someone else can use it, and
>>>> I'm getting
>>>> the following error message when I try to advance beyond the
>>>> "Service
>>>> Configuration" screen in the installer:
>>>>
>>>> "Your local 'Administrators' group contains 'Authenticated Users'.
>>>> This is a common configuration error that causes security
>>>> issues. For this
>>>> reason, Postgr"
>>>>
>>>> That's it. Apparently the whole error message doesn't fit in the
>>>> error dialog,
>>>> but there's no way to resize the window.
>>>>
>>>> Does anybody know what the rest of this message might be? Bonus
>>>> points if you
>>>> can explain what it means, and especially if you can explain
>>>> what to
>>>> do about
>>>> it.
>>>>
>>>> I suspect this is more a WIndows problem than a PostgreSQL
>>>> problem, but I'm
>>>> afraid I don't know that much about Windows. I'm a Mac/Unix kind of
>>>> guy, and I
>>>> try to avoid using WIndows whenever possible because this kind of
>>>> stuff always
>>>> happens.
>>>
>>> I don't know 100%, but it looks like the "authenticated users"
>>> group is a
>>> member of the "administrators" group.  This means that anyone who
>>> logs in
>>> to the workstation is an administrator.  It's a complete lack of
>>> security,
>>> but it's also very common (in my experience) for Windows
>>> workstations.
>>>
>>> I'm guessing that the PG installer is being anal and refusing to
>>> allow you
>>> to install on such a poorly configured system, but that part I
>>> don't know.
>>>
>>> My suggestion would be to fix the users/groups on the Windows
>>> system so there
>>> is a special administrative user, then remove authenticated users
>>> from the
>>> administrator group.
>>
>> When I saw this error I immediately went to the "Local Users and
>> Groups" control
>> panel to see if I could figure out what the heck it was talking
>> about, and I
>> swear there is no group called "Authenticated Users". That's
>> what's so
>> baffling
>> about this, apart from the incomplete error message.
>
> Ahh ... IIRC, this isn't a _real_ group, it's kind of a pseudo-
> group that
> Windows evaluates on the fly to distinguish between users who have
> authenticated, and people who are using the system without having
> logged
> in (the fact that such a thing is possible at all is disturbing ...)

What's really disturbing is that someone in our IT department set up
this machine, and its policies are so screwed up I can't even install
a dbms.

> It's a shame -- I get the impression that the rest of that error
> message
> would help you fix the issue, but I don't remember what you can do
> about
> it.  Probably something to do with group policy, or some other setting
> in the security realm.

I'm kind of surprised that this installer could make it through a
test cycle with an error message that's not legible. Is there any
chance this error might be logged somewhere?