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Postgresql vs Active Directory

My project to integrate PostgreSQL with Active Directory is progressing nicely.

(Yes, this is a good thing. MS SQL Server has "Integrated Security" which means it leverages the exsting Windows login to automatically access the database without a separate password. In a domain environment (read corporate environment), this is usually a very good thing. Having similar functionality in PostgreSQL helps make migration easier.)

Once the patches that were included in 8.0.2 got in, the remaining job wasn't very hard. Getting basic kerberos interoperability working was a lot easier now than last time I tried it, lots of progress made on the kerberos distributions there.

So far it only works if your server runs on Linux (or any unix should work - the point is that the win32 native server currently does not work). The clients can run either Windows or Unix. It requires the clients to use libpq (which means perhaps it works with the OLE DB driver since it's based on libpq - I need to test that).

It also requires the server and libpq to be recompiled with a different compile option. I'm going to be working on a patch for 8.1 to solve that.

A HOWTO document will be written once I've ironed out the last parts of the process. What I have now is enough for me to deploy to a set of about 30 users for 10dbs, but the build instructions are not exactly clear ATM.

Oh, and big thanks to Dave and the pgAdmin team for putting out 1.2.1 so quickly which had a fix required for Kerberos authentication to work.

Windows interop weirdness plus torrent news

Hit something really weird in the windows vs linux interop department yesterday. Consider this:

Format a disk FAT32 in Windows. Mount it in linux, copy some files, reboot into Windows XP setup and proceed to install Windows. Works just fine.

Format a disk FAT32 in Linux. Mount in linux, copy some files. Reboot into Windows XP setup and proceed to install Windows. Works just fine - up to a point. After reboot (after Windows Setup has copied all files from the network to the local disk), the machine no longer boots - reports "Disk error" in the boot sector.

So much for interop. Solution? Do a disk image of a FAT32 partition formatted in Windows (empty - the image ends up around 10K for a 3Gb partition), and then restore that disk image from linux. Then it works. Hmmmm..

To make this post a little more PostgreSQL related, I got the new bittorrent stuff pushed out for www.postgresql.org yesterday. Now torrent downloads are automated, and they are automatically listed in the ftp browser. Should make it easier to find the torrents, and easier to make them track reality around new releases.

Getting started

So I guess Devrim talked me into starting one of these as well - I think he wants to create an army or something. We'll see where it ends. There should certainly be some PostgreSQL stuff I can rant about...

Conferences

I speak at and organize conferences around Open Source in general and PostgreSQL in particular.

Upcoming

PGDay Chicago 2024
Apr 26, 2024
Chicago, USA
PGConf.DEV 2024
May 28-31, 2024
Vancouver, Canada

Past

SCaLE 2024
Mar 14-17, 2024
Pasadena, USA
Nordic PGDay 2024
Mar 12, 2024
Oslo, Norway
FOSDEM PGDay 2024
Feb 2-4, 2024
Brussels, Belgium
PGConf.EU 2023
Dec 12-15, 2023
Prague, Czechia
PGConf.NYC 2023
Oct 3-5, 2023
New York, USA
More past conferences