Re: BUG #15300: "do you want the application "postgres" to accept incoming network connections" dialog box madness

[ again, please keep the bugs list cc'd for the archives' sake ]

John Daniel <jdjddjdj(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> Sooooo far, losing the "fe80::1%lo0 localhost" line in etc/hosts
> seeeeeems to have killed the problem - without a reboot.

Cool!

> I'm taking my computer home for the weekend and will let you know - but, so
> far, no more dialog boxes.
> [may add the line back in just to test it]
> It always seemed to pop up extra-lots when using Premiere and Unreal game
> engine, both of which I will be in tons this weekend

Hmm. Some googling suggests that some Unreal Engine games use Postgres
for long-term data storage. The behavior you're seeing could be explained
if we assume that the games are occasionally firing up Postgres for just
long enough to fetch or store something. (That's not typical use of
Postgres, which is why the short duration of the popup windows was
surprising.)

I still have no idea *why* the fe80::1%lo0 line is in there, or whether
there's any downside to taking it out. File dates on my own Macs suggest
that maybe Apple shipped some OSX versions years ago that had it in there
by default, and that newer versions don't have it, but system upgrades
don't replace the file if it's already present. If so, whether you see
the problem could depend on how far back your last entirely-clean OSX
install was. But that's mostly guesswork.

regards, tom lane