Something to maybe add to the TODO list, if someone has the
time/inclination to work on it ...
The problem with the current auth system, as I see it, is that you can't
easily have seperate user lists and passwords per database ... its shared
across the system ...
The closest you can get is to have a database defined as 'password' in
pg_hba.conf, with an external password file from pg_shadow, which, for the
most part, is good ... but it doesn't lend itself well to a 'hands off'
server ...
Right now, with v7.2, we have two 'sub-processes' that start up for stats
collection ... has anyone thought about adding a 3rd as a password server?
Basically, it would be used to manage the pg_hba.conf file itself *while*
the server is/was live ...
For instance, CREATE DATABASE would need to get extended to have
something like "WITH AUTH '{trust|password|ident}' FROM '<IP>'" added to
it, which would add an appropriate line to pg_hba.conf ...
The database owner would have the ability to add users if (and only if)
the database was setup for 'password', and the password daemon would
automatically modify the password file(s) for that database ..
What would be even more cool ... to be able to do something like:
CREATE USER <user> FROM <IP> WITH PASSWORD <password>
which, if it didn't exist, would create a line in pg_hba.conf of:
host <database> <ip> password <database>
and create a <database> password file with that person in it ...