Don't leave pg_hba and pg_ident data lying around in running backends.

Free the contexts holding this data after we're done using it, by the
expedient of attaching them to the PostmasterContext which we were
already taking care to delete (and where, indeed, this data used to live
before commits e5e2fc842c418432 and 7c45e3a3c682f855).  This saves a
probably-usually-negligible amount of space per running backend.  It also
avoids leaving potentially-security-sensitive data lying around in memory
in processes that don't need it.  You'd have to be unusually paranoid to
think that that amounts to a live security bug, so I've not gone so far as
to forcibly zero the memory; but there surely isn't a good reason to keep
this data around.

Arguably this is a memory management bug in the aforementioned commits,
but it doesn't seem important enough to back-patch.

diff --git a/src/backend/libpq/hba.c b/src/backend/libpq/hba.c
index 7a935f34b58293de68b77b4919d4dc659f177aa5..23c8b5de6b448650e6d8c5b7c38a198bb2ab2f99 100644 (file)
--- a/src/backend/libpq/hba.c
+++ b/src/backend/libpq/hba.c
@@ -386,7 +386,7 @@ tokenize_file(const char *filename, FILE *file,
        MemoryContext linecxt;
        MemoryContext oldcxt;
 
-       linecxt = AllocSetContextCreate(TopMemoryContext,
+       linecxt = AllocSetContextCreate(CurrentMemoryContext,
                                                                        "tokenize file cxt",
                                                                        ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_MINSIZE,
                                                                        ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_INITSIZE,
@@ -1770,7 +1770,8 @@ load_hba(void)
        FreeFile(file);
 
        /* Now parse all the lines */
-       hbacxt = AllocSetContextCreate(TopMemoryContext,
+       Assert(PostmasterContext);
+       hbacxt = AllocSetContextCreate(PostmasterContext,
                                                                   "hba parser context",
                                                                   ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_MINSIZE,
                                                                   ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_MINSIZE,
@@ -2147,7 +2148,8 @@ load_ident(void)
        FreeFile(file);
 
        /* Now parse all the lines */
-       ident_context = AllocSetContextCreate(TopMemoryContext,
+       Assert(PostmasterContext);
+       ident_context = AllocSetContextCreate(PostmasterContext,
                                                                                  "ident parser context",
                                                                                  ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_MINSIZE,
                                                                                  ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_MINSIZE,

diff --git a/src/backend/utils/init/postinit.c b/src/backend/utils/init/postinit.c
index 063b0653b49416622a18e2d5bd472d8c0ea56af1..0f04f28116696d2f109909d499cc8ee61e2c0028 100644 (file)
--- a/src/backend/utils/init/postinit.c
+++ b/src/backend/utils/init/postinit.c
@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@
 #include "utils/acl.h"
 #include "utils/fmgroids.h"
 #include "utils/guc.h"
+#include "utils/memutils.h"
 #include "utils/pg_locale.h"
 #include "utils/portal.h"
 #include "utils/ps_status.h"
@@ -190,6 +191,18 @@ PerformAuthentication(Port *port)
         * FIXME: [fork/exec] Ugh.  Is there a way around this overhead?
         */
 #ifdef EXEC_BACKEND
+       /*
+        * load_hba() and load_ident() want to work within the PostmasterContext,
+        * so create that if it doesn't exist (which it won't).  We'll delete it
+        * again later, in PostgresMain.
+        */
+       if (PostmasterContext == NULL)
+               PostmasterContext = AllocSetContextCreate(TopMemoryContext,
+                                                                                                 "Postmaster",
+                                                                                                 ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_MINSIZE,
+                                                                                                 ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_INITSIZE,
+                                                                                                 ALLOCSET_DEFAULT_MAXSIZE);
+
        if (!load_hba())
        {
                /*