Re: erroneous restore into pg_catalog schema

On 2013-01-13 12:29:08 -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Erik Rijkers" <er(at)xs4all(dot)nl> writes:
> > If you dump a table with -t schema.table, and in the receiving database that schema does not
> > exist, pg_restore-9.3devel will restore into the pg_catalog schema:
> > ...
> > Off course the workaround is obvious, but shouldn't this be prevented from happening in the first
> > place? 9.2 refuses to do such a restore, which seems much better.
>
> I said to myself "huh? surely we did not change pg_dump's behavior
> here". But actually it's true, and the culprit is commit 880bfc328,
> "Silently ignore any nonexistent schemas that are listed in
> search_path". What pg_dump is emitting is
>
> SET search_path = s, pg_catalog;
> CREATE TABLE t (...);
>
> and in HEAD the SET throws no error and instead establishes pg_catalog
> as the target schema for object creation. Oops.
>
> So obviously, 880bfc328 was several bricks shy of a load. The arguments
> for that change in behavior still seem good for schemas *after* the
> first one; but the situation is entirely different for the first schema,
> because that's what the command is attempting to establish as the
> creation schema.

There also is the seemingly independent question of why the heck its
suddently allowed to create (but not drop?) tables in pg_catalog.
9.2 does:
andres=# CREATE TABLE pg_catalog.c AS SELECT 1;
ERROR: permission denied to create "pg_catalog.c"
DETAIL: System catalog modifications are currently disallowed.
Time: 54.180 ms

HEAD:
postgres=# CREATE TABLE pg_catalog.test AS SELECT 1;
SELECT 1
Time: 124.112 ms
postgres=# DROP TABLE pg_catalog.test;
ERROR: permission denied: "test" is a system catalog
Time: 0.461 ms

Greetings,

Andres Freund