Hi all,
While troubleshooting a failed upgrade from v11 -> v12 I realised I had
encountered a bug previously reported on the pgsql-bugs mailing list:
#14242 Role with a setconfig "role" setting to a nonexistent role causes
pg_upgrade to fail
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20160711223641.1426.86096%40wrigleys.postgresql.org
To quote the previous report:
> It is possible to modify the "role" setting in setconfig in the
> pg_db_role_setting table such that it points to a nonexistent role. When
> this is the case, restoring the output of pg_dumpall will fail due to the
> missing role.
> Steps to reproduce:
> 1. As superuser, execute "create role foo with login password 'test'"
> 2. As foo, execute "alter role foo set role = 'foo'"
> 3. As superuser, execute "alter role foo rename to bar"
> a. At this point, the setconfig entry in pg_db_role_setting for
> 'bar' will contain '{role=foo}', which no longer exists
> 4. Execute pg_upgrade with the recommended steps in
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/pgupgrade.html
> During pg_upgrade (more specifically, during the restore of the output from
> pg_dumpall), the "ALTER ROLE "bar" SET "role" TO 'foo'" command generated
> will fail with "ERROR: role "foo" does not exist".
> This issue was identified by Jordan Lange and Nathan Bossart.
The steps in the original report reproduce the problem on all currently
supported pg versions. I appreciate that the invalid role-specific default
settings are ultimately self-inflicted by the user, but as a third-party
performing the upgrade this caught me by surprise.
Since it is possible to write a query to identify these cases, would there
be appetite for me to submit a patch to add a check for this to
pg_upgrade?
First time mailing list user here so many apologies for any missteps I have
made in this message.
Best regards,
Charlie Hornsby
