Re: Parsing of pg_hba.conf and authentication inconsistencies

Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> writes:
> Should I read this as you warming up slightly to the idea of having the
> postmaster do that? ;-)

No ;-).  I still think that a "postgres --check-config" feature would be
far more complete and useful, as well as less likely to cause bugs in
critical code paths.

A point that I don't think has been made so far in the thread: the
only place the postmaster could complain in event of problems is the
postmaster log, which we know too well isn't watched by inexperienced
DBAs.  I guarantee you that we will get bug reports along the lines of
"I updated pg_hba.conf and did pg_ctl reload, but nothing changed!
Postgres sucks!" if we implement checking at load time.  I think one of
the main advantages of a --check-config approach is that whatever it had
to say would come out on the user's terminal.
        regards, tom lane