Re: PQerrorMessage() bug?

Carlos Hasan <chasan(at)acepta(dot)com> writes:
> I think that found a weird bug when PQconnectdb() fails because I
> haven't started PostgreSQL. The function PQerrorMessage() returns the
> message:

> could not connect to server: <<<weird garbage here>>
> Is the server running locally and accepting
> connections on Unix domain socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.

> Looks like the error message wasn't properly formatted.

I think this is the known problem with GNU libc having a weird
(non-SUS-spec) strerror_r. There's a workaround in the 8.0 sources
but it doesn't look like anyone's backported it to 7.4. You can
drop the pqStrerror() code from CVS tip src/port/thread.c into 7.4
if you like (this will not work in general because 7.4 configure doesn't
set STRERROR_R_INT, but it should work for the case you want).

regards, tom lane