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Official Windows Installer and Documentation

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    david.g.johnston@gmail.com2022-07-27T19:21:27+00:00
    Hey, Just interacted with a frustrated user on Slack trying to upgrade from v13 to v14 on Windows. Our official download page for the Windows installer claims the core documentation as its official reference - can someone responsible for this area please suggest and test some changes to make this reality more acceptable. The particular point that was brought up is our documentation for pg_upgrade says: RUNAS /USER:postgres "CMD.EXE" SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\14\bin; The problem is apparently (I haven't personally tested) our official installer doesn't bother to create the postgres operating system user account. It is also unclear whether the defaults for pg_hba.conf add some kind of bad interaction here should one fix this particular problem. And then there is the issue of file ownership. Assuming we want better documentation for this specific issue for back-patching what would that look like? Going forward should our installer be creating the postgres user for consistency with other platforms or not? I suggest adding relevant discussion about this particular official binary distribution to: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/install-binaries.html David J.
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      shammat@gmx.net2022-07-27T21:36:11+00:00
      David G. Johnston schrieb am 27.07.2022 um 21:21: > And then there is the issue of file ownership. > > Assuming we want better documentation for this specific issue for > back-patching what would that look like? > > Going forward should our installer be creating the postgres user for > consistency with other platforms or not? Didn't the installer used to do that in earlier releases and that was removed when Postgres was able to "drop privileges" when the service is started? I remember a lot of problems around the specific Postgres service account when that still was the case. As far as I can tell, most of the problems of the Windows installer stem from the fact that it tries to use icacls to set privileges on the data directory. This seems to fail quite frequently, causing the infamous "Problem running post-install step" error. The fact that the installer still defaults to using "c:\Program Files" for the location of the data directoy might be related to that. (but then I don't know enough of the internals of the installer and Windows) Just my 0.02€ Thomas
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        rjuju123@gmail.com2022-07-28T01:42:19+00:00
        Hi, On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 11:36:11PM +0200, Thomas Kellerer wrote: > David G. Johnston schrieb am 27.07.2022 um 21:21: > > And then there is the issue of file ownership. > > > > Assuming we want better documentation for this specific issue for > > back-patching what would that look like? > > > > Going forward should our installer be creating the postgres user for > > consistency with other platforms or not? > > Didn't the installer used to do that in earlier releases and that > was removed when Postgres was able to "drop privileges" when the > service is started? > > I remember a lot of problems around the specific Postgres service > account when that still was the case. Note that there's no "official" Windows installer, and companies providing one are free to implement it the way they want, which can contradict the official documentation. The download section of the website clearly says that this is a third-party installer. For now there's only the EDB installer that remains, but I think that some time ago there was 2 or 3 different providers. For the EDB installer, I'm not sure why or when it was changed, but it indeed used to have a dedicated local account and now relies on "Local System Account" or something like that. But IIRC, when it used to create a local account the name could be configured, so there was no guarantee of a local "postgres" account by then either.
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          david.g.johnston@gmail.com2022-07-28T02:02:51+00:00
          On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 6:42 PM Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 11:36:11PM +0200, Thomas Kellerer wrote: > > David G. Johnston schrieb am 27.07.2022 um 21:21: > > > And then there is the issue of file ownership. > > > > > > Assuming we want better documentation for this specific issue for > > > back-patching what would that look like? > > > > > > Going forward should our installer be creating the postgres user for > > > consistency with other platforms or not? > > > > Didn't the installer used to do that in earlier releases and that > > was removed when Postgres was able to "drop privileges" when the > > service is started? > > > > I remember a lot of problems around the specific Postgres service > > account when that still was the case. > > Note that there's no "official" Windows installer, and companies providing > one > are free to implement it the way they want, which can contradict the > official > documentation. The download section of the website clearly says that this > is a > third-party installer. > > For now there's only the EDB installer that remains, but I think that some > time > ago there was 2 or 3 different providers. > > For the EDB installer, I'm not sure why or when it was changed, but it > indeed > used to have a dedicated local account and now relies on "Local System > Account" > or something like that. But IIRC, when it used to create a local account > the > name could be configured, so there was no guarantee of a local "postgres" > account by then either. > > Our technical definition aside, the fact is our users consider the sole EDB installer to be official. If the ultimate solution is to update: https://www.enterprisedb.com/downloads/postgres-postgresql-downloads to have its own installation and upgrade supplement to the official documentation then I'd be fine with that. But as of now the "Installation Guide" points back to the official documentation, which has no actual distribution specific information while simultaneously reinforcing the fact that it is an official installer. I get sending people to the EDB web services team for download issues since we don't host the binaries. That aspect of them being third-party doesn't seem to be an issue. But for documentation, given the current state of things, whether we amend our docs or highly encourage the people who are benefiting financially from being our de facto official Windows installer provider to provide separate documentation to address this apparent short-coming that is harming our image in the Windows community, I don't really care, as long as something changes. In the end the problem is ours and cannot be simply assigned to a third-party. So let's resolve it here (on this list, whatever the solution) where representatives from all parties are present. David J.
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            tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us2022-07-28T02:57:15+00:00
            "David G. Johnston" <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes: > On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 6:42 PM Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123@gmail.com> wrote: >> Note that there's no "official" Windows installer, Yeah, that. > Our technical definition aside, the fact is our users consider the sole EDB > installer to be official. > If the ultimate solution is to update: > https://www.enterprisedb.com/downloads/postgres-postgresql-downloads > to have its own installation and upgrade supplement to the official > documentation then I'd be fine with that. That's what needs to happen. On the Linux side for example, we do not address packaging-specific behaviors of Devrim's builds, or Debian's builds, or Red Hat's builds --- all of which act differently, in ways that are sadly a lot more critical to novices than seasoned users. If EDB isn't adequately filling in the documentation for the behavior of their packaging, that's on them. regards, tom lane
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              tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us2022-07-28T03:22:31+00:00
              I wrote: > If EDB isn't adequately filling in the documentation for the behavior > of their packaging, that's on them. Having now looked more closely at the pg_upgrade documentation, I don't think this is exactly EDB's fault; it's text that should never have been there to begin with. ISTM we need to simply rip out lines 431..448 of pgupgrade.sgml, that is all the Windows-specific text starting with For Windows users, you must be logged into an administrative account, and That has got nothing to recommend it: we do not generally provide platform-specific details in these man pages, and to the extent it provides details, those details are likely to be wrong. We need look no further than the references to "9.6" to establish that. Yeah, it says "e.g.", but novices will probably fail to understand which parts of the example are suitable to copy verbatim and which aren't. Meanwhile non-novices don't need the example to begin with. On top of which, the whole para has been inserted into non-platform-specific text, seemingly with the aid of a dartboard, because it doesn't particularly connect to what's before or after it. regards, tom lane
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                david.g.johnston@gmail.com2022-07-28T04:28:51+00:00
                On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 8:22 PM Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote: > I wrote: > > If EDB isn't adequately filling in the documentation for the behavior > > of their packaging, that's on them. > > Having now looked more closely at the pg_upgrade documentation, > I don't think this is exactly EDB's fault; it's text that should > never have been there to begin with. ISTM we need to simply rip out > lines 431..448 of pgupgrade.sgml, that is all the Windows-specific > text starting with > > For Windows users, you must be logged into an administrative account, > and > > That has got nothing to recommend it: we do not generally provide > platform-specific details in these man pages, and to the extent it > provides details, those details are likely to be wrong. I mean, we do provide platform-specific details/examples, it's just that platform is a source installed Linux platform (though pathless) Does the avoidance of dealing with other platforms also apply to NET STOP or do you find that an acceptable variance? Or are you suggesting that basically all O/S commands should be zapped? If not, then rewriting 442 to 446 to just be the command seems worthwhile. I'd say pg_upgrade warrants an examples section like pg_basebackup has (though obviously pg_upgrade is procedural). I do have another observation: https://github.com/postgres/postgres/blob/4fc6b6eefcf98f79211bb790ee890ebcb05c178d/src/bin/pg_upgrade/check.c#L665 if (PQntuples(res) != 1 || atooid(PQgetvalue(res, 0, 1)) != BOOTSTRAP_SUPERUSERID) pg_fatal("database user \"%s\" is not the install user", os_info.user); Any reason to not inform the DBA the name of the install user here? Sure, it is almost certainly postgres, but it also seems like an easy win in order for them, and anyone they may ask for help, to know exactly the name of install user in the clusters should that end up being the issue. Additionally, from what I can tell, if that check does fail (or any of the checks really) it is not possible to tell whether the check was being performed against the old or new server. The user does not know that checks against the old server are performed first then checks against the new one, and there are no banners saying "checking old/new" David J.
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            rjuju123@gmail.com2022-07-28T02:17:49+00:00
            On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 07:02:51PM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote: > > In the end the problem is ours and cannot be simply assigned to a > third-party. So let's resolve it here (on this list, whatever the > solution) where representatives from all parties are present. We could amend the pg_upgrade (and maybe other if needed, but I don't see any other occurences of RUNAS) documentation to be a bit more general, like the non-windows part of it, maybe something like For Windows users, you must be logged into an administrative account, and then start a shell as the user running the postgres service and set the proper path. Assuming a user named postgres and the binaries installed in C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\14: RUNAS /USER:postgres "CMD.EXE" SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\14\bin; It's ultimately up to the users to adapt the commands to match their environment.
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              david.g.johnston@gmail.com2022-07-28T02:31:35+00:00
              On Wednesday, July 27, 2022, Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 07:02:51PM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote: > > > > In the end the problem is ours and cannot be simply assigned to a > > third-party. So let's resolve it here (on this list, whatever the > > solution) where representatives from all parties are present. > > We could amend the pg_upgrade (and maybe other if needed, but I don't see > any > other occurences of RUNAS) documentation to be a bit more general, like the > non-windows part of it, maybe something like > > For Windows users, you must be logged into an administrative account, and > then > start a shell as the user running the postgres service and set the proper > path. > Assuming a user named postgres and the binaries installed in C:\Program > Files\PostgreSQL\14: > > RUNAS /USER:postgres "CMD.EXE" > SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\14\bin; > > It's ultimately up to the users to adapt the commands to match their > environment. > Ultimately we do our users the best service if when they operate an installation using defaults that they have documentation showing how to perform something like an upgrade that works with those defaults. I don’t see much point making that change in isolation until it is obvious nothing better is forthcoming. If the o/s user postgres doesn’t exist then you need to supply -U postgres cause the install user for PostgresSQL is still postgres. So why not assume the user is whatever the EDB installer uses and make that the example? If someone has an install on Windows that uses the postgres account adapting the command for them should be trivial and the majority installer users get a command sequence that works. David J.
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                rjuju123@gmail.com2022-07-28T02:58:45+00:00
                On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 07:31:35PM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote: > > Ultimately we do our users the best service if when they operate an > installation using defaults that they have documentation showing how to > perform something like an upgrade that works with those defaults. I don't really agree that it's best service to let users assume that they can blindly copy/paste some commands without trying to understand them, or how to adapt them to their specificities. That's in my opinion particularly true on windows, since to my knowledge most companies will have the binaries installed in one place (C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL might be frequent), and have the data stored in another place (D: or other). So I don't think the default command will actually work for any non toy installation. > So why not assume the user is whatever the EDB installer uses > and make that the example? Well, IIUC that used to be the case until EDB changed its installer. Maybe the odds for an impacting change to happen again are low, but it's certainly not a great idea to assume that the community will regularly check their installer and update the doc to match what they're doing. So yeah it may be better for them to provide a documentation adapted to their usage.