I want to remind everyone of this from Gabriele's first message that
started this thread:
At the moment, a possible workaround is that `ALTER SYSTEM` can be blocked
by making the postgresql.auto.conf read only, but the returned message is
misleading and that’s certainly bad user experience (which is very
important in a cloud native environment):
```
postgres=# ALTER SYSTEM SET wal_level TO minimal;
ERROR: could not open file "postgresql.auto.conf": Permission denied
```
I think making the config file read-only is a fine solution. If you
don't want postgres to mess with the config files, forbid it with the
permission system.
Problems with pg_rewind, pg_basebackup were mentioned with that
approach. I think if you want the config files to be managed outside
PostgreSQL, by kubernetes, patroni or whatever, it would be good for
them to be read-only to the postgres user anyway, even if we had a
mechanism to disable ALTER SYSTEM. So it would be good to fix the
problems with those tools anyway.
The error message is not great, I agree with that. Can we improve it?
Maybe just add a HINT like this:
postgres=# ALTER SYSTEM SET wal_level TO minimal;
ERROR: could not open file "postgresql.auto.conf" for writing:
Permission denied
HINT: Configuration might be managed outside PostgreSQL
Perhaps we could make that even better with a GUC though. I propose a
GUC called 'configuration_managed_externally = true / false". If you set
it to true, we prevent ALTER SYSTEM and make the error message more
definitive:
postgres=# ALTER SYSTEM SET wal_level TO minimal;
ERROR: configuration is managed externally
As a bonus, if that GUC is set, we could even check at server startup
that all the configuration files are not writable by the postgres user,
and print a warning or refuse to start up if they are.
(Another way to read this proposal is to rename the GUC that's been
discussed in this thread to 'configuration_managed_externally'. That
makes it look less like a security feature, and describes the intended
use case.)
--
Heikki Linnakangas
Neon (https://neon.tech)
