Re: FW: [ppa-dev] Severe bug in debian - phppgadmin opens

> Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> > The idea of allowing the password to be stored in a file with 600
> > permissions seems quite standard.  CVS does this.
> 
> Seems it would be nice if psql could accept a switch along the lines of
>     --password-is-in-file filename
> and go off to read the password from the named file (which we hope is
> secured correctly).

We can check security of the file if we wish.

> Or take it a little further: what about defining a PGPASSWORDFILE
> environment variable that libpq would consult, before or instead of
> PGPASSWORD?  That would give us the same feature for free across all
> libpq-using apps, not only psql.  Exposing a file name in the
> environment is not a security risk, I hope.

Yes, seems like a good idea.  Seems we may need both.  Either we allow
multiple host/password combinations in the file or we need a psql flag,
but then again, a psql flag doesn't cover the other interfaces.  We
could require they use one password file per host.

Added to TODO:
 * Add PGPASSWORDFILE password file capability to libpq and psql flag

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