Re: COPY command and required file permissions

Thanks for the info. SELinux was the guilty party...

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:48 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Harold_A._Gim=E9nez_Ch.?=" <harold(dot)gimenez(at)gmail(dot)com>
> writes:
> > In migrating an application from sql server to Postgres, I created a ruby
> > script that extracts csv files from sql server (from a windows box), then
> > SCPs them into a directory (/home/ruby_process) on the server running
> > Postgres (a Fedora core 8) and finally runs the Postgres COPY command for
> > each of the csv files.
>
> > When the script runs the COPY commnand, I get the following error (for
> the
> > genders table):
>
> > ERROR C42501 M could not open file "/home/ruby_process/genders.csv"
> for
> > reading: Permission denied Fcopy.c L1694 RCopyFrom (RuntimeError)
>
> If you have the directory and file permissions straight, then my guess
> is that you have SELinux turned on and it's disallowing the postgres
> daemon from accessing anything "out of the ordinary". The best fix
> is probably to adjust the security labeling on your transfer directory.
> I can't give you a cookbook recipe for that, but something along the
> line of
>
> /usr/bin/chcon -u system_u -r object_r -t postgresql_db_t
> /home/ruby_process
>
> might do it. I'm not sure if you'd need to fool with the permissions on
> /home as well.
>
> The easiest fix is to disable SELinux, but I wouldn't recommend that
> unless the machine is entirely isolated from the internet.
>
> regards, tom lane
>