Re: "Optional ident" authentication

"Jeroen T. Vermeulen" <jtv@xs4all.nl> writes:
> Is there a reason other than existing code why HBA should not allow
> "ident" to be combined with other authentication methods?

How about that it's a bad idea?  A combo method seems ideally suited
to security holes, in the form of letting through unintended logins.

> To scratch that itch I've made a patch that adds a new authentication
> method called optident.  It behaves like ident except that it continues
> walking down the HBA configuration on failure.

... and this particular approach would break more installations'
security than I really want to think about.  It's not really a new ident
method, it's a very fundamental change in the semantics of pg_hba.conf.
As an example of how much it would change things, the "reject" auth
option would become a useless no-op.
        regards, tom lane