On Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 5:15 PM Maciek Sakrejda <m.sakre...@gmail.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. -- Robert Haas EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
