Re: [HACKERS] List of hostaddrs not supported

While testing libpq and GSS the other day, I was surprised by the behavior of the host and hostaddr libpq options, if you specify a list of hostnames.

I did this this, and it took me quite a while to figure out what was going on:

$ psql "dbname=postgres hostaddr=::1  host=localhost,localhost user=krbtestuser" -c "SELECT 'hello'"
psql: GSSAPI continuation error: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
GSSAPI continuation error: Server postgres/localhost,localhost@PG.EXAMPLE not found in Kerberos database

That was a pilot error; I specified a list of hostnames, but only one hostaddr. But I would've expected to get a more helpful error, pointing that out.

Some thoughts on this:

1. You cannot actually specify a list of hostaddrs. Trying to do so gives error:

psql: could not translate host name "::1,::1" to address: Name or service not known

That error message is a bit inaccurate, in that it wasn't really a "host name" that it tried to translate, but a raw address in string format. That's even more confusing if you make the mistake that you specify "hostaddr=localhost":