Re: testing 8.4

Hi Everybody,

I feel that I need to reword my question.

Testing environment:

Windows 2008 server, 64bit

I am testing postgres 8.4 beta to see what is different and why, in case my application that resides on postgers will need to change.

I ran into a difference, a very minor difference for which I could not establish a logical reason and so I though I would ask if anyone has ran into it (eliminating a local problem on my machine), and perhaps an explanation why difference in behavior exists:

In 8.3.0, 8.3.4 and 8.3.7 (only versions I have tested), if the postgres installation wizard is executed the following folder structure is laid down, all files under the PostgreSQL folder have the same privileges, allowing the admin user to delete the folder structure after the postgres application had been uninstalled.

Testing 8.4 I found a difference in privileges being inherited by some data files under the Data folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\PostgreSQL\8.4, under it are:

Bin

Data

…

The Data directory contains the following:

Base…

Pg_tblspc

-          tablespace indicated by an integer

o        table indicated by an integer

§         individual files indicated by integers

QUESTION: all of these files make up the single logical object of the table – in this case there were over a thousand, in testing 8.4 beta I found that several of these files had different privileges from the other ones in this directory.

This difference in file permissions, prevented me from deleting the C:\Program Files (x86)\PostgreSQL folder, after I uninstalled postgres and wanted to clean up the machine

Follow up questions:

-Could this be a postgres installer issue? Or a windows issue?

-How can files that make up the same object and supposedly inherit privileges from a parent directory end up with different privs? Unless they are created under different security context, is that the case with the installer?

-I know that the workaround for this is to either delete the PostgreSQL folder as the owner i.e. the postgres user, or for the admin user to take ownership and delete it than, I am interested in a reason why as opposed to a workaround.

I apologize if the admin forum is inappropriate for 8.4 beta questions.

Thank you,

Sincerely,

Kasia

the install sets the file permissions to account for postgresql service.  The only account that should have access to those files is the postgresql service, and the postgresql account should only have access to directories that it needs access to. 

If you took ownership of the directory and then add full control for admin replacing permissions on all child objects  it would have saved time instead of doing it by file.

Kasia Tuszynska wrote:

Hi Everybody,

Is anyone testing 8.4 beta?

I installed it on win2008 64bit machine, testing and uninstalling I found no problems, but I ran into an issue with trying to delete the C:\Program Files (x86)\PostgreSQL folder after uninstalling. File permissions on some of the data files under the Data folder seemed to have missing admin privileges, I had to delete each file one by one and than add full privs to admin on the files that were missing it.

Has anyone else ran into this?

Sincerely,

Kasia