On Thu, Sep 1, 2022 at 8:51 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>
> "Peter J. Holzer" <hjp-pgsql@hjp.at> writes:
> > However, the symlink doesn't seem to be the culprit. If I run
> > % sudo -u postgres -H /usr/lib/postgresql/13/bin/psql
> > (which is not a symlink)
> > I get the same behaviour. So it seems that psql changes to its basedir
> > and then can't change back again.
>
> Ah --- looking closer at that code, it will chdir *before* checking
> whether the target file is a symlink, which is probably unnecessarily
> stupid. I'm wondering whether we could drop that logic altogether [1],
> but that won't help you today.
>
> I concur with the other person asking why you want to sudo to postgres
> at all, though. It's generally safest if the client side isn't running
> as the same user as the server.
The use case is an install of DefectDojo [2]. I _think_ they are
taking advantage of the fact that as root, you don't need to
authenticate because of postgresql's use of domain sockets. (Hat tip
for that, by the way). The installer code will install packages, setup
the database, install the DefectDojo programs, etc.
Jeff
> [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/797232.1662075573%40sss.pgh.pa.us
[2] https://github.com/DefectDojo/godojo