Re: [Gnumed-devel] removing test data

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Sat, Aug 08, 2009 at 01:13:59PM -0700, Jim Busser wrote:

> I accept that the change of the postgres password was irrelevant to
> the solution... I suppose I was testing whether an initialized
> postgres (whose pw I forgot and therefore reset) would be allowed to
> even alter the gnumed databases.

I see. Yes, someone with knowledge/access to use the
database account "postgres" would have powers to alter the
gnumed databases. On Debian, whoever has OS level access to
the system account "postgres" has all the database account
"postgres" rights.

> Does it make any difference to GNUmed, in terms of bootstrap or
> update scripts or any other GNUmed database needs, whether the
> postgres system user was initialized

What do you mean by "initialized" ?

> or whether (and what) is the
> postgres system and database users' passwords?

There is none for either on a Debian system.

> Or does GNUmed care only about gm-dbo?

And about root in some places.

> Also, at present, knowledge of the gm-dbo password is very powerful
> because it permits to delete patients, drop the database, and
> anything in between.

That is correct.

> If an office manager presently needs to be given that password in
> order to be able to add users to GNUmed, is that too much power,
> given that the person could
> 
>       psql -h hostname gnumed_vN -U gm-dbo -f do_what_they_want.sql
> 
> or does the above require that the individual have access to a
> system account into which they could ssh and additionally have sudo
> or root access?

No. Knowing the password is enough. We can later better
separate powers.

> >Remote access should not be allowed for "postgres" at all.
> 
> Do you mean remote access as user postgres, to thwart hackers
> attempting generic access to the machine (even while, if I
> understand correctly, a legitimate admin with sudo access could
> still ssh into the machine and sudo su - postgres if relevant to
> some maintenance?)

Both the system user and the database account.

Karsten
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