Re: Possibility to disable `ALTER SYSTEM`

> On 15 Mar 2024, at 03:58, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 07:43:15PM -0400, Robert Haas wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 5:15 PM Maciek Sakrejda <m(dot)sakrejda(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>>> It's not a security feature: it's a usability feature.
>>>
>>> It's a usability feature because, when Postgres configuration is
>>> managed by an outside mechanism (e.g., as in a Kubernetes
>>> environment), ALTER SYSTEM currently allows a superuser to make
>>> changes that appear to work, but may be discarded at some point in the
>>> future when that outside mechanism updates the config. They may also
>>> be represented incorrectly in a management dashboard if that dashboard
>>> is based on the values in the outside configuration mechanism, rather
>>> than values directly from Postgres.
>>>
>>> In this case, the end user with access to Postgres superuser
>>> privileges presumably also has access to the outside configuration
>>> mechanism. The goal is not to prevent them from changing settings, but
>>> to offer guard rails that prevent them from changing settings in a way
>>> that will be unstable (revertible by a future update) or confusing
>>> (not showing up in a management UI).
>>>
>>> There are challenges here in making sure this is _not_ seen as a
>>> security feature. But I do think the feature itself is sensible and
>>> worthwhile.
>>
>> This is what I would have said if I'd tried to offer an explanation,
>> except you said it better than I would have done.
>
> I do think the docs need to clearly say this is not a security feature.

A usability feature whose purpose is to guard against a superuser willingly
acting against how the system is managed, or not even knowing how it is
managed, does have a certain security feature smell. We've already had a few
CVE's filed against usability features so I don't think Tom's fears are at all
ungrounded.

Another quirk for the documentation of this: if I disable ALTER SYSTEM I would
assume that postgresql.auto.conf is no longer consumed, but it still is (and
still need to be), so maybe "enable/disable" is the wrong choice of words?

--
Daniel Gustafsson