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2014-02-17Last-minute updates for release notes.Tom Lane
Add entries for security issues. Security: CVE-2014-0060 through CVE-2014-0067
2014-02-17Improve documentation about multixact IDs.Tom Lane
Per gripe from Josh Berkus.
2014-02-17Document risks of "make check" in the regression testing instructions.Tom Lane
Since the temporary server started by "make check" uses "trust" authentication, another user on the same machine could connect to it as database superuser, and then potentially exploit the privileges of the operating-system user who started the tests. We should change the testing procedures to prevent this risk; but discussion is required about the best way to do that, as well as more testing than is practical for an undisclosed security problem. Besides, the same issue probably affects some user-written test harnesses. So for the moment, we'll just warn people against using "make check" when there are untrusted users on the same machine. In passing, remove some ancient advice that suggested making the regression testing subtree world-writable if you'd built as root. That looks dangerously insecure in modern contexts, and anyway we should not be encouraging people to build Postgres as root. Security: CVE-2014-0067
2014-02-17Document security implications of check_function_bodies.Noah Misch
Back-patch to 8.4 (all supported versions).
2014-02-17Prevent privilege escalation in explicit calls to PL validators.Noah Misch
The primary role of PL validators is to be called implicitly during CREATE FUNCTION, but they are also normal functions that a user can call explicitly. Add a permissions check to each validator to ensure that a user cannot use explicit validator calls to achieve things he could not otherwise achieve. Back-patch to 8.4 (all supported versions). Non-core procedural language extensions ought to make the same two-line change to their own validators. Andres Freund, reviewed by Tom Lane and Noah Misch. Security: CVE-2014-0061
2014-02-17Shore up ADMIN OPTION restrictions.Noah Misch
Granting a role without ADMIN OPTION is supposed to prevent the grantee from adding or removing members from the granted role. Issuing SET ROLE before the GRANT bypassed that, because the role itself had an implicit right to add or remove members. Plug that hole by recognizing that implicit right only when the session user matches the current role. Additionally, do not recognize it during a security-restricted operation or during execution of a SECURITY DEFINER function. The restriction on SECURITY DEFINER is not security-critical. However, it seems best for a user testing his own SECURITY DEFINER function to see the same behavior others will see. Back-patch to 8.4 (all supported versions). The SQL standards do not conflate roles and users as PostgreSQL does; only SQL roles have members, and only SQL users initiate sessions. An application using PostgreSQL users and roles as SQL users and roles will never attempt to grant membership in the role that is the session user, so the implicit right to add or remove members will never arise. The security impact was mostly that a role member could revoke access from others, contrary to the wishes of his own grantor. Unapproved role member additions are less notable, because the member can still largely achieve that by creating a view or a SECURITY DEFINER function. Reviewed by Andres Freund and Tom Lane. Reported, independently, by Jonas Sundman and Noah Misch. Security: CVE-2014-0060
2014-02-16Release notes for 9.3.3, 9.2.7, 9.1.12, 9.0.16, 8.4.20.Tom Lane
2014-02-16Further wordsmithing on 9.3.3 release notes.Tom Lane
No substantive changes, but reorder some items and improve some descriptions.
2014-02-16Improve release notes per comments from Andres Freund.Tom Lane
Make a bit more noise about the timeout-interrupt bug. Also, remove the release note entry for commit 423e1211a; that patch fixed a problem introduced post-9.3.2, so there's no need to document it in the release notes.
2014-02-16First-draft release notes for 9.3.3.Tom Lane
As usual, the release notes for older branches will be made by cutting these down, but put them up for community review first.
2014-02-14Update regression testing instructions.Tom Lane
This documentation never got the word about the existence of check-world or installcheck-world. Revise to recommend use of those, and document all the subsidiary test suites. Do some minor wordsmithing elsewhere, too. In passing, remove markup related to generation of plain-text regression test instructions, since we don't do that anymore. Back-patch to 9.1 where check-world was added. (installcheck-world exists in 9.0; but since check-world doesn't, this patch would need additional work to cover that branch, and it doesn't seem worth the effort.)
2014-02-14Suggest shell here-documents instead of psql -c for multiple commands.Tom Lane
The documentation suggested using "echo | psql", but not the often-superior alternative of a here-document. Also, be more direct about suggesting that people avoid -c for multiple commands. Per discussion.
2014-02-13Separate multixact freezing parameters from xid'sAlvaro Herrera
Previously we were piggybacking on transaction ID parameters to freeze multixacts; but since there isn't necessarily any relationship between rates of Xid and multixact consumption, this turns out not to be a good idea. Therefore, we now have multixact-specific freezing parameters: vacuum_multixact_freeze_min_age: when to remove multis as we come across them in vacuum (default to 5 million, i.e. early in comparison to Xid's default of 50 million) vacuum_multixact_freeze_table_age: when to force whole-table scans instead of scanning only the pages marked as not all visible in visibility map (default to 150 million, same as for Xids). Whichever of both which reaches the 150 million mark earlier will cause a whole-table scan. autovacuum_multixact_freeze_max_age: when for cause emergency, uninterruptible whole-table scans (default to 400 million, double as that for Xids). This means there shouldn't be more frequent emergency vacuuming than previously, unless multixacts are being used very rapidly. Backpatch to 9.3 where multixacts were made to persist enough to require freezing. To avoid an ABI break in 9.3, VacuumStmt has a couple of fields in an unnatural place, and StdRdOptions is split in two so that the newly added fields can go at the end. Patch by me, reviewed by Robert Haas, with additional input from Andres Freund and Tom Lane.
2014-02-13docs: improve CREATE FUNCTION docs about language case and quotingBruce Momjian
Report from Marc Mamin
2014-02-13pgcrypto: clarify 'md5' (hash) table entryBruce Momjian
Per suggestion from Peter Eisentraut
2014-02-13pg_upgrade: mention the need for tablespace snapshots in docsBruce Momjian
2014-02-12pg_upgrade: document use of file system and COW snapshotsBruce Momjian
2014-02-12Improve cross-references between minor version release notes.Tom Lane
We have a practice of providing a "bread crumb" trail between the minor versions where the migration section actually tells you to do something. Historically that was just plain text, eg, "see the release notes for 9.2.4"; but if you're using a browser or PDF reader, it's a lot nicer if it's a live hyperlink. So use "<xref>" instead. Any argument against doing this vanished with the recent decommissioning of plain-text release notes. Vik Fearing
2014-02-12Revert gmake/make release note changesBruce Momjian
Backbranch release note changes cause merge conflicts.
2014-02-12Rename 'gmake' to 'make' in docs and recommended commandsBruce Momjian
This simplifies the docs and makes it easier to cut/paste command lines.
2014-02-12doc: Postgres date-style date-only output is ISOBruce Momjian
Backpatch to 9.3 Report from MauMau
2014-02-10Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore.Tom Lane
Providing this information as plain text was doubtless worth the trouble ten years ago, but it seems likely that hardly anyone reads it in this format anymore. And the effort required to maintain these files (in the form of extra-complex markup rules in the relevant parts of the SGML documentation) is significant. So, let's stop doing that and rely solely on the other documentation formats. Per discussion, the plain-text INSTALL instructions might still be worth their keep, so we continue to generate that file. Rather than remove HISTORY and src/test/regress/README from distribution tarballs entirely, replace them with simple stub files that tell the reader where to find the relevant documentation. This is mainly to avoid possibly breaking packaging recipes that expect these files to exist. Back-patch to all supported branches, because simplifying the markup requirements for release notes won't help much unless we do it in all branches.
2014-02-05doc: Disable indentation of XHTML outputPeter Eisentraut
Indenting the XHTML output can lead to incorrect rendering. This only affects the build via XSLT.
2014-02-05Minor improvements to replication slot documentation.Robert Haas
Fix a thinko pointed out by Jeff Davis, and convert a couple of other references into links.
2014-02-03Rephrase text to avoid links in regress.sgmlRobert Haas
Otherwise, the standalone regress_README build gets unhappy.
2014-02-03Document a few more regression test hazards.Robert Haas
Michael Paquier, reviewed by Christian Kruse
2014-02-03Add <indexterm> for functions pg_sleep_for and pg_sleep_until.Fujii Masao
2014-02-02Fix typos in docs and comments.Fujii Masao
Thom Brown
2014-01-31Introduce replication slots.Robert Haas
Replication slots are a crash-safe data structure which can be created on either a master or a standby to prevent premature removal of write-ahead log segments needed by a standby, as well as (with hot_standby_feedback=on) pruning of tuples whose removal would cause replication conflicts. Slots have some advantages over existing techniques, as explained in the documentation. In a few places, we refer to the type of replication slots introduced by this patch as "physical" slots, because forthcoming patches for logical decoding will also have slots, but with somewhat different properties. Andres Freund and Robert Haas
2014-01-31docs: mention 'g' is not in the regex embedded options tableBruce Momjian
Mentioned in substring() and regexp_replace() sections.
2014-01-31doc: mention statistics reset during crash recoveryBruce Momjian
Takayuki Tsunakawa
2014-01-31doc: mention data page checksums in WAL sectionBruce Momjian
Backpatch to 9.3 Adjusted patch from Ian Lawrence Barwick
2014-01-31docs: mention tgconstrindid supports exclusion constraintsBruce Momjian
Dean Rasheed
2014-01-31Add some examples to the postgres_fdw documentation.Tom Lane
Michael Paquier
2014-01-31doc: authentication wording improvementsBruce Momjian
Suggested by David Tonhofer
2014-01-31docs: specify FOR UPDATE/SHARE incompatibilitiesBruce Momjian
Document that FOR UPDATE/SHARE are incompatible with GROUP BY, DISTINCT, HAVING and window functions. Michael Paquier
2014-01-31Fix documented return type of json_array_elements_text.Andrew Dunstan
Per gripe from hubert depesz lubaczewski. Also improve examples for this and json_array_elements so they match the example results.
2014-01-30Add convenience functions pg_sleep_for and pg_sleep_until.Robert Haas
Vik Fearing, reviewed by Pavel Stehule and myself
2014-01-30docs: improve xref description for xreflabel and refentry linksBruce Momjian
2014-01-30docs: mention SGML refentry also pulls text from the linkBruce Momjian
2014-01-30docs: add mention of index swappingBruce Momjian
Backpatch to 9.3 Greg Smith
2014-01-30Add checks for interval overflow/underflowBruce Momjian
New checks include input, month/day/time internal adjustments, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and negation. Also adjust docs to correctly specify interval size in bytes. Report from Rok Kralj
2014-01-29Include planning time in EXPLAIN ANALYZE output.Robert Haas
This doesn't work for prepared queries, but it's not too easy to get the information in that case and there's some debate as to exactly what the right thing to measure is, so just do this for now. Andreas Karlsson, with slight doc changes by me.
2014-01-29Add json_array_elements_text function.Andrew Dunstan
This was a notable omission from the json functions added in 9.3 and there have been numerous complaints about its absence. Laurence Rowe.
2014-01-29Remedy two small omissions in the new json functions docs.Andrew Dunstan
2014-01-29Fix docs build.Heikki Linnakangas
Broken by the huge_tlb_pages patch. Vik Fearing.
2014-01-29Allow using huge TLB pages on Linux (MAP_HUGETLB)Heikki Linnakangas
This patch adds an option, huge_tlb_pages, which allows requesting the shared memory segment to be allocated using huge pages, by using the MAP_HUGETLB flag in mmap(). This can improve performance. The default is 'try', which means that we will attempt using huge pages, and fall back to non-huge pages if it doesn't work. Currently, only Linux has MAP_HUGETLB. On other platforms, the default 'try' behaves the same as 'off'. In the passing, don't try to round the mmap() size to a multiple of pagesize. mmap() doesn't require that, and there's no particular reason for PostgreSQL to do that either. When using MAP_HUGETLB, however, round the request size up to nearest 2MB boundary. This is to work around a bug in some Linux kernel versions, but also to avoid wasting memory, because the kernel will round the size up anyway. Many people were involved in writing this patch, including Christian Kruse, Richard Poole, Abhijit Menon-Sen, reviewed by Peter Geoghegan, Andres Freund and me.
2014-01-28Minor docs fixes for new json functions.Andrew Dunstan
Thom Brown.
2014-01-28New json functions.Andrew Dunstan
json_build_array() and json_build_object allow for the construction of arbitrarily complex json trees. json_object() turns a one or two dimensional array, or two separate arrays, into a json_object of name/value pairs, similarly to the hstore() function. json_object_agg() aggregates its two arguments into a single json object as name value pairs. Catalog version bumped. Andrew Dunstan, reviewed by Marko Tiikkaja.
2014-01-29Add pg_stat_archiver statistics view.Fujii Masao
This view shows the statistics about the WAL archiver process's activity. Gabriele Bartolini, reviewed by Michael Paquier, refactored a bit by me.