PostgreSQL 9.6.5 Documentation
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# E.198. Release 8.1.21

Release date: 2010-05-17

This release contains a variety of fixes from 8.1.20. For information about new features in the 8.1 major release, see Section E.219.

## E.198.1. Migration to Version 8.1.21

A dump/restore is not required for those running 8.1.X. However, if you are upgrading from a version earlier than 8.1.18, see Section E.201.

## E.198.2. Changes

- Enforce restrictions in `plperl` using an opmask applied to the whole interpreter, instead of using `Safe.pm` (Tim Bunce, Andrew Dunstan)

  Recent developments have convinced us that `Safe.pm` is too insecure to rely on for making `plperl` trustable. This change removes use of `Safe.pm` altogether, in favor of using a separate interpreter with an opcode mask that is always applied. Pleasant side effects of the change include that it is now possible to use Perl's `strict` pragma in a natural way in `plperl`, and that Perl's `$a` and `$b` variables work as expected in sort routines, and that function compilation is significantly faster. (CVE-2010-1169)

- Prevent PL/Tcl from executing untrustworthy code from `pltcl_modules` (Tom)

  PL/Tcl's feature for autoloading Tcl code from a database table could be exploited for trojan-horse attacks, because there was no restriction on who could create or insert into that table. This change disables the feature unless `pltcl_modules` is owned by a superuser. (However, the permissions on the table are not checked, so installations that really need a less-than-secure modules table can still grant suitable privileges to trusted non-superusers.) Also, prevent loading code into the unrestricted "normal" Tcl interpreter unless we are really going to execute a `pltclu` function. (CVE-2010-1170)

- Do not allow an unprivileged user to reset superuser-only parameter settings (Alvaro)

  Previously, if an unprivileged user ran `ALTER USER ... RESET ALL` for himself, or `ALTER DATABASE ... RESET ALL` for a database he owns, this would remove all special parameter settings for the user or database, even ones that are only supposed to be changeable by a superuser. Now, the `ALTER` will only remove the parameters that the user has permission to change.

- Avoid possible crash during backend shutdown if shutdown occurs when a `CONTEXT` addition would be made to log entries (Tom)

  In some cases the context-printing function would fail because the current transaction had already been rolled back when it came time to print a log message.

- Update pl/perl's `ppport.h` for modern Perl versions (Andrew)

- Fix assorted memory leaks in pl/python (Andreas Freund, Tom)

- Prevent infinite recursion in psql when expanding a variable that refers to itself (Tom)

- Ensure that `contrib/pgstattuple` functions respond to cancel interrupts promptly (Tatsuhito Kasahara)

- Make server startup deal properly with the case that `shmget()` returns `EINVAL` for an existing shared memory segment (Tom)

  This behavior has been observed on BSD-derived kernels including OS X. It resulted in an entirely-misleading startup failure complaining that the shared memory request size was too large.

- Update time zone data files to tzdata release 2010j for DST law changes in Argentina, Australian Antarctic, Bangladesh, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Russia, Syria, Tunisia; also historical corrections for Taiwan.

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