PostgreSQL always sends the BackendKeyData message at connection
startup, but there are some third party backend implementations out
there that don't support cancellation, and don't send the message
[1]. While the protocol docs left it up for interpretation if that is
valid behavior, libpq in PostgreSQL 17 and below accepted it. It does
not seem like the libpq behavior was intentional though, since it did
so by sending CancelRequest messages with all zeros to such servers
(instead of returning an error or making the cancel a no-op).
In version 18 the behavior was changed to return an error when trying
to create the cancel object with PGgetCancel() or PGcancelCreate().
This was done without any discussion, as part of supporting different
lengths of cancel packets for the new 3.2 version of the protocol.
This commit changes the behavior of PGgetCancel() / PGcancel() once
more to only return an error when the cancel object is actually used
to send a cancellation, instead of when merely creating the object.
The reason to do so is that some clients [2] create a cancel object as
part of their connection creation logic (thus having the cancel object
ready for later when they need it), so if creating the cancel object
returns an error, the whole connection attempt fails. By delaying the
error, such clients will still be able to connect to the third party
backend implementations in question, but when actually trying to
cancel a query, the user will be notified that that is not possible
for the server that they are connected to.
This commit only changes the behavior of the older PGgetCancel() /
PQcancel() functions, not the more modern PQcancelCreate() family of
functions. I.e. PQcancelCreate() returns a failed connection object
(CONNECTION_BAD) if the server didn't send a cancellation key. Unlike
the old PQgetCancel() function, we're not aware of any clients in the
field that use PQcancelCreate() during connection startup in a way
that would prevent connecting to such servers.
[1] AWS RDS Proxy is definitely one of them, and CockroachDB might be
another.
[2] psycopg2 (but not psycopg3).
Author: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Reviewed-by: Jacob Champion <jacob.champion@enterprisedb.com>
Backpatch-through: 18
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20250617.101056.1437027795118961504.ishii%40postgresql.org
PQcancelCreate failed to copy struct pg_conn_host's "type" field,
instead leaving it zero (a/k/a CHT_HOST_NAME). This seemingly
has no great ill effects if it should have been CHT_UNIX_SOCKET
instead, but if it should have been CHT_HOST_ADDRESS then a
null-pointer dereference will occur when the cancelConn is used.
Bug: #18974
Reported-by: Maxim Boguk <maxim.boguk@gmail.com>
Author: Sergei Kornilov <sk@zsrv.org>
Reviewed-by: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/18974-575f02b2168b36b3@postgresql.org
Backpatch-through: 17
A 'void *' argument suggests that the caller might pass an arbitrary
struct, which is appropriate for functions like libc's read/write, or
pq_sendbytes(). 'uint8 *' is more appropriate for byte arrays that
have no structure, like the cancellation keys or SCRAM tokens. Some
places used 'char *', but 'uint8 *' is better because 'char *' is
commonly used for null-terminated strings. Change code around SCRAM,
MD5 authentication, and cancellation key handling to follow these
conventions.
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/61be9e31-7b7d-49d5-bc11-721800d89d64@eisentraut.org
Currently, the cancel request key is a 32-bit token, which isn't very
much entropy. If you want to cancel another session's query, you can
brute-force it. In most environments, an unauthorized cancellation of
a query isn't very serious, but it nevertheless would be nice to have
more protection from it. Hence make the key longer, to make it harder
to guess.
The longer cancellation keys are generated when using the new protocol
version 3.2. For connections using version 3.0, short 4-bytes keys are
still used.
The new longer key length is not hardcoded in the protocol anymore,
the client is expected to deal with variable length keys, up to 256
bytes. This flexibility allows e.g. a connection pooler to add more
information to the cancel key, which might be useful for finding the
connection.
Reviewed-by: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Reviewed-by: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> (earlier versions)
Discussion: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/508d0505-8b7a-4864-a681-e7e5edfe32aa@iki.fi
The existing PQcancel API uses blocking IO, which makes PQcancel
impossible to use in an event loop based codebase without blocking the
event loop until the call returns. It also doesn't encrypt the
connection over which the cancel request is sent, even when the original
connection required encryption.
This commit adds a PQcancelConn struct and assorted functions, which
provide a better mechanism of sending cancel requests; in particular all
the encryption used in the original connection are also used in the
cancel connection. The main entry points are:
- PQcancelCreate creates the PQcancelConn based on the original
connection (but does not establish an actual connection).
- PQcancelStart can be used to initiate non-blocking cancel requests,
using encryption if the original connection did so, which must be
pumped using
- PQcancelPoll.
- PQcancelReset puts a PQcancelConn back in state so that it can be
reused to send a new cancel request to the same connection.
- PQcancelBlocking is a simpler-to-use blocking API that still uses
encryption.
Additional functions are
- PQcancelStatus, mimicks PQstatus;
- PQcancelSocket, mimicks PQcancelSocket;
- PQcancelErrorMessage, mimicks PQerrorMessage;
- PQcancelFinish, mimicks PQfinish.
Author: Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Reviewed-by: Denis Laxalde <denis.laxalde@dalibo.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/AM5PR83MB0178D3B31CA1B6EC4A8ECC42F7529@AM5PR83MB0178.EURPRD83.prod.outlook.com
In follow up commits we'll add more functions related to query
cancellations. This groups those all together instead of mixing them
with the other functions in fe-connect.c.
The formerly static parse_int_param() function had to be exported to
other libpq users, so it's been renamed pqParseIntParam() and moved to a
more reasonable place within fe-connect.c (rather than randomly between
various keepalive-related routines).
Author: Jelte Fennema-Nio <jelte.fennema@microsoft.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/AM5PR83MB0178D3B31CA1B6EC4A8ECC42F7529@AM5PR83MB0178.EURPRD83.prod.outlook.com
