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Heikki Linnakangas fe0a0b5993 Replace PostmasterRandom() with a stronger source, second attempt.
This adds a new routine, pg_strong_random() for generating random bytes,
for use in both frontend and backend. At the moment, it's only used in
the backend, but the upcoming SCRAM authentication patches need strong
random numbers in libpq as well.

pg_strong_random() is based on, and replaces, the existing implementation
in pgcrypto. It can acquire strong random numbers from a number of sources,
depending on what's available:

- OpenSSL RAND_bytes(), if built with OpenSSL
- On Windows, the native cryptographic functions are used
- /dev/urandom

Unlike the current pgcrypto function, the source is chosen by configure.
That makes it easier to test different implementations, and ensures that
we don't accidentally fall back to a less secure implementation, if the
primary source fails. All of those methods are quite reliable, it would be
pretty surprising for them to fail, so we'd rather find out by failing
hard.

If no strong random source is available, we fall back to using erand48(),
seeded from current timestamp, like PostmasterRandom() was. That isn't
cryptographically secure, but allows us to still work on platforms that
don't have any of the above stronger sources. Because it's not very secure,
the built-in implementation is only used if explicitly requested with
--disable-strong-random.

This replaces the more complicated Fortuna algorithm we used to have in
pgcrypto, which is unfortunate, but all modern platforms have /dev/urandom,
so it doesn't seem worth the maintenance effort to keep that. pgcrypto
functions that require strong random numbers will be disabled with
--disable-strong-random.

Original patch by Magnus Hagander, tons of further work by Michael Paquier
and me.

Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAB7nPqRy3krN8quR9XujMVVHYtXJ0_60nqgVc6oUk8ygyVkZsA@mail.gmail.com
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAB7nPqRWkNYRRPJA7-cF+LfroYV10pvjdz6GNvxk-Eee9FypKA@mail.gmail.com
2016-12-05 13:42:59 +02:00
config Fix python shlib probe for Cygwin. 2016-10-07 11:27:34 -04:00
contrib Replace PostmasterRandom() with a stronger source, second attempt. 2016-12-05 13:42:59 +02:00
doc Replace PostmasterRandom() with a stronger source, second attempt. 2016-12-05 13:42:59 +02:00
src Replace PostmasterRandom() with a stronger source, second attempt. 2016-12-05 13:42:59 +02:00
.dir-locals.el emacs: Set indent-tabs-mode in perl-mode 2015-04-12 23:53:23 -04:00
.gitattributes Fix whitespace and remove obsolete gitattributes entry 2016-03-13 16:03:13 -04:00
.gitignore Allow .so minor version numbers above 9 in .gitignore. 2016-08-15 17:35:35 -04:00
COPYRIGHT Update copyright for 2016 2016-01-02 13:33:40 -05:00
GNUmakefile.in Have "make coverage" recurse into contrib as well 2016-09-05 18:44:36 -03:00
HISTORY Improve text of stub HISTORY file. 2014-02-12 18:16:17 -05:00
Makefile Allow make check in PL directories 2011-02-15 06:52:12 +02:00
README Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore. 2014-02-10 20:48:04 -05:00
README.git Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore. 2014-02-10 20:48:04 -05:00
aclocal.m4 Replace our hacked version of ax_pthread.m4 with latest upstream version. 2015-07-08 20:36:06 +03:00
configure Replace PostmasterRandom() with a stronger source, second attempt. 2016-12-05 13:42:59 +02:00
configure.in Replace PostmasterRandom() with a stronger source, second attempt. 2016-12-05 13:42:59 +02:00

README

PostgreSQL Database Management System
=====================================

This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL
database management system.

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system
that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including
transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types
and functions.  This distribution also contains C language bindings.

PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here:

	http://www.postgresql.org/download

See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install
PostgreSQL.  That file also lists supported operating systems and
hardware platforms and contains information regarding any other
software packages that are required to build or run the PostgreSQL
system.  Copyright and license information can be found in the
file COPYRIGHT.  A comprehensive documentation set is included in this
distribution; it can be read as described in the installation
instructions.

The latest version of this software may be obtained at
http://www.postgresql.org/download/.  For more information look at our
web site located at http://www.postgresql.org/.