Re: Parsing of pg_hba.conf and authentication inconsistencies

Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>> Tom Lane wrote:

>> Doesn't it seem reasonable that it should be pg_ctl? You should never
>> run postgres directly unless it is for DR.
>
> What on earth is DR?

Disaster Recovery.

>
> The problem with pg_ctl is that it's indirectly calling postgres, and it
> doesn't have a lot of a way to know what happened after calling it;
> consider the mess we have with pg_ctl -w.
>

True enough but perhaps that is a problem in itself. IMO, we should be
encouraging people to never touch the postgres binary. If that means
pg_ctl becomes a lot smarter, then we have to consider that as well.

Comparatively if I do a apachectl configtest it tells me if it is
correct. Now I assume it is actually calling httpd (I haven't checked)
but the point is, I am not calling httpd.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake