Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes: > Tom Lane wrote: >> I wonder if we should take pg_read_file (and the rest of genfile.c) >> back out of the backend and stick them into contrib/adminpack.
> I thought about that but what we have in the backend now is read-only > which basically could be done using COPY, so I don't see any security > value to moving them out. They are super-user only just like COPY. The you-can-do-it-with-COPY argument doesn't apply to pg_ls_dir, nor to pg_stat_file, and I find it unconvincing even for pg_read_file. COPY isn't at all friendly for trying to read binary files, for instance. Even for plain ASCII text you'd have to try to find a delimiter character not present anywhere in the file, and backslashes in the file would get corrupted. But the basic point here is that someone who wants filesystem access from the database is going to install adminpack anyway. Why should someone who *doesn't* want filesystem access from the database be forced to have some capabilities of that type installed anyway? regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org