SEO

>
> The example given in this thread certainly isn't going to change
> anybody's mind. "Hi, I propose reducing everybody's security because
> my local admins insist on an utterly brain-dead security policy."
>

What's wrong with that?

But seriously, the proposal is not to reduce everybody's security, just
make it an option for people that want to. I am not arguing that it is
a good idea/bad idea. In fact, the best thing to do may be to leave it
in contrib, so if someone thinks it will solve a problem, it is at least
a little painful to get to it. But at least by putting it into contrib,
it may be useful to someone. Especially if the idea is to put a sample
database onto a removable device. I suspect this is for some kind of
demo (if not, it could be used for one); you go to a prospects site, pop
the CD/DVD into their machine, and show off what your product can do for
them. In that case, you may have no control over the permissions on the
machine, and you certainly do not want to have to create and switch
users for a demo; you've just lost the customers interest.

Also, in my case, I'm running the debugger and profiler against Postgres
on my Windows machine. I find it much easier to throw out the admin
restriction, so I can just use my own account. I agree that my default
account should not have had full admin rights, but that is the way the
machine came. And yes, I should have immediately created a new user and
set myself up on that one. But come on, my old laptop was so old, and I
was so excited... sorry, TMI.

Mike Pollard
SUPRA Server SQL Engineering and Support
Cincom Systems, Inc



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On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 09:56:03AM -0500, Pollard, Mike wrote:
> a little painful to get to it. But at least by putting it into contrib,
> it may be useful to someone. Especially if the idea is to put a sample

Keep in mind that compiling something on windows is extremely painful
for most people. Unlike unix, the vast majority of windows users don't
have a compiler laying around.

> Also, in my case, I'm running the debugger and profiler against Postgres
> on my Windows machine. I find it much easier to throw out the admin
> restriction, so I can just use my own account. I agree that my default
> account should not have had full admin rights, but that is the way the
> machine came. And yes, I should have immediately created a new user and
> set myself up on that one. But come on, my old laptop was so old, and I
> was so excited... sorry, TMI.

Well, a bigger issue is that windows makes things a lot more difficult
to do if you don't have admin on your account. Yes, there is runas, but
windows doesn't exactly foster people working from the command line. And
IIRC runas isn't nearly as nice to use as sudo.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461

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> Well, a bigger issue is that windows makes things a lot more difficult
> to do if you don't have admin on your account. Yes, there is runas, but
> windows doesn't exactly foster people working from the command line. And
> IIRC runas isn't nearly as nice to use as sudo.

Couldn't the installer create a handy dandy icon on the desktop with the
correct runas command to start/stop it for a given user or even have a
graphical pg_ctl type interface with Start, Stop and Restart buttons
that does the right thing behind the scenes?


On unix I get a startup script that hides the su and other logic and
safeties behind the scenes.
--


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On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 11:39:37AM -0500, Rod Taylor wrote:
> > Well, a bigger issue is that windows makes things a lot more difficult
> > to do if you don't have admin on your account. Yes, there is runas, but
> > windows doesn't exactly foster people working from the command line. And
> > IIRC runas isn't nearly as nice to use as sudo.
>
> Couldn't the installer create a handy dandy icon on the desktop with the
> correct runas command to start/stop it for a given user or even have a
> graphical pg_ctl type interface with Start, Stop and Restart buttons
> that does the right thing behind the scenes?
>
>
> On unix I get a startup script that hides the su and other logic and
> safeties behind the scenes.

Well, I think the normal windows installer goes and installs PostgreSQL
as a service, which eliminates all these problems; but that doesn't help
for the case of trying to run a demo.

BTW, my point was that the reason many windows users run with admin
rights is because windows doesn't provide a viable alternative (unlike
OS X).
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461

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On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 10:58:31AM -0600, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
> BTW, my point was that the reason many windows users run with admin
> rights is because windows doesn't provide a viable alternative (unlike
> OS X).

Err, sorry, hit send too soon. My point about OS X isn't meant to start
a flame war, only to point out that there are ways to make this work in
a GUI environment. Maybe in the future Windows will pick one of those
ways up.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461

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