Re: BUG #14456: pg_dump doesn't restore permissions on tables belonging to an extension

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the response.

On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 2:01 PM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> > 3. Extension changes ACLs on the table.
>
> Extensions are not actors, so claiming that "the extension" did something
> is at best pretty fuzzy thinking.
>

Fair enough. The extension's includes code that stores logs into a table
that is partitioned by timestamp. A function belonging to the extension is
periodically called to rotate out the currently-active partition and create
a new one.

> > 4. After changing ACLs, the table is added to the extension (ALTER
> > EXTENSION)
> > 5. A pg_dump of this database will now include ACL commands for the
> > table.
>
> Hmm. There's an argument to be made that ALTER EXTENSION ADD should
> absorb whatever the object's current ACLs are into the pg_init_privs
> entries for the extension. (I don't think it does that now, though
> I might be wrong.) However ...
>

Yes, that's what I'm arguing for. As I write this I see another message in
which it looks like Stephen has agreed to look at this, so thank you
Stephen!

> 6. A pg_restore of this file will give warnings because the ACLs refer
> > to a table that is not created as part of the installation process.
>
> I think this scenario is simply pilot error, or at least gross abuse of
> the extension system. If you dump and reload a DB containing an extension,
> the extension definition that's fetched by CREATE EXTENSION is expected
> to define (at least) all the objects that belonged to the extension in the
> old DB. You can't just randomly ALTER EXTENSION and not update the
> extension definition script to match.
>

The reason I add the dynamically-created tables to the extension is so that
they are never included in the pg_dump output. If this is a gross abuse of
the extension system, is there another way you can suggest to mark these
tables as not-to-be-dumped?

Thank you.
--
Moshe Jacobson
Principal Architect, Nead Werx Inc.