Re: libpq 8.4 beta1: $PGHOST complains about missing root.crt

Stephen Frost wrote:
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> * Peter Eisentraut (peter_e@gmx.net) wrote:
> > This is not a question of new client with old server.  The new version of the
> > client has a more secure default that will possibly prevent it from connecting
> > to *any* server that is not adequately configured.
>
> A properly configured server could cause a failure too unless the client
> is *also* properly configured.  Sure, it's good for people to do.  No, I
> don't think we should break things if people don't build out a whole PKI
> for PG and configure all their certs correctly.  It's pie-in-the-sky to
> think everyone will do that, and in the end most will just say "SSL
> breaks stuff, so we'll disable it" which certainly isn't better.
>
> > But it's a default, so the user can change it.
>
> It should be the default to connect, maybe with a warning.
>
> > Consider the analogy that a new web browser comes out that verifies server
> > certificates (as of course all respectable browsers do nowadays) whereas the
> > previous version one didn't.  The right fix there is certainly not to
> > downgrade this to a warning when connecting to an older web server.
>
> Uh, no, the right fix is to have a warning/prompt (as pretty much all
> web browsers today do) but then continue to connect.  Also, the
> web-browser analogy completely falls apart when you consider that the
> use case is significantly different (how many times have you connected
> to a PG server that you didn't know?).

The problem is that libpq doesn't have any ability to warn/prompt like
SSH and web browsers do, so I think Magnus patterned the libpq behavior
around cases where warning/prompt failed in these environments.

I am not saying the current behavior is correct, only why it was
configured that way.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +