Re: More Code Page wierdness

On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 11:20 +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > > > These are definitely not Windows Installer problems because it is
> > > > perfectly valid action to change the Language of a
> > server, at least
> > > > in Europe. The server should work, no matter what any installer
> > > > did/does....just the same as the server knows not to start if the
> > > > installer incorrectly set up the rights of the instance owning
> > > > userid.
> > >
> > > Definitly. The issue appears to be that you have an invalid
> > encoding
> > > in the config file. How exaclty did you get there - did the
> > installer
> > > edit it into the wrong encoding, or did you edit it manually? Using
> > > what editor?
> >
> > Looks like Windows Server 2003 was setup with "English -
> > United States", then PostgreSQL was installed using "English
> > -UK", and the system was being edited with a UK keyboard
> > (which shows things like British pound, hash and star all in
> > their correct (!) place ...i.e. different to US).
>
> My question remains - was the '*' put there by the installer, or
> manually using notepad (or whatever) later? (The checkbox in the
> installer to modify it)

I think it was originally put there by installer, then as part of
faffing backwards and forwards trying to get connectivity to work, it
was set to localhost, then to a looks-like-a-* by hand editing in the
wrong code page.

> I wonder if a partial solution to this would be to set the codepage
> before we load the config file? IIRC, the config file is loaded in
> whatever codepage happens to be active when the server starts. The code
> page is later changed when loading pg_control (LC_CTYPE should affect
> it). That's how I think it works without specifically looking at the
> code.

Yes, thats along the right lines.

The issue also effects hash - since the looks-like-a-hash character in
different code pages is not actually a hash either - so if you comment
out a line, it could still be in effect, but you can't tell by looking!

This also effects all other .conf files, including recovery.conf. So if
you tried to recover a system using a recovery.conf coded on another
system it could give you problems...

Problem is this:
Editors don't tell you what code page you're using, so when you edit a
file you see one thing, then the server sees another.

We could test the ASCII code and if we see a
- a single character non-* in listen_addresses then issue a WARNING
- if we see a line beginning with a non-alpha character assume it is a
comment

but we need a catch-all solution...

--
Best Regards, Simon Riggs