How to quickly drop a user with existing privileges - postgresql

I'm trying to make restricted DB users for the app I'm working on, and I want to drop the Postgres database user I'm using for experimenting. Is there any way to drop the user without having to revoke all his rights manually first, or revoke all the grants a user has?

How about
DROP USER <username>
This is actually an alias for DROP ROLE.
You have to explicity drop any privileges associated with that user, also to move its ownership to other roles (or drop the object).
This is best achieved by
REASSIGN OWNED BY <olduser> TO <newuser>
and
DROP OWNED BY <olduser>
The latter will remove any privileges granted to the user.
See the postgres docs for DROP ROLE and the more detailed description of this.
Addition:
Apparently, trying to drop a user by using the commands mentioned here will only work if you are executing them while being connected to the same database that the original GRANTS were made from, as discussed here:
https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/83894A1821034948BA27FE4DAA47427928F7C29922%40apde03.APD.Satcom.Local

The accepted answer resulted in errors for me when attempting REASSIGN OWNED BY or DROP OWNED BY. The following worked for me:
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public FROM username;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA public FROM username;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA public FROM username;
DROP USER username;
The user may have privileges in other schemas, in which case you will have to run the appropriate REVOKE line with "public" replaced by the correct schema. To show all of the schemas and privilege types for a user, I edited the \dp command to make this query:
SELECT
n.nspname as "Schema",
CASE c.relkind
WHEN 'r' THEN 'table'
WHEN 'v' THEN 'view'
WHEN 'm' THEN 'materialized view'
WHEN 'S' THEN 'sequence'
WHEN 'f' THEN 'foreign table'
END as "Type"
FROM pg_catalog.pg_class c
LEFT JOIN pg_catalog.pg_namespace n ON n.oid = c.relnamespace
WHERE pg_catalog.array_to_string(c.relacl, E'\n') LIKE '%username%';
I'm not sure which privilege types correspond to revoking on TABLES, SEQUENCES, or FUNCTIONS, but I think all of them fall under one of the three.

Here's what's finally worked for me :
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA myschem FROM user_mike;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA myschem FROM user_mike;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA myschem FROM user_mike;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA myschem FROM user_mike;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA myschem REVOKE ALL ON SEQUENCES FROM user_mike;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA myschem REVOKE ALL ON TABLES FROM user_mike;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA myschem REVOKE ALL ON FUNCTIONS FROM user_mike;
REVOKE USAGE ON SCHEMA myschem FROM user_mike;
REASSIGN OWNED BY user_mike TO masteruser;
DROP USER user_mike ;

Also note, if you have explicitly granted:
CONNECT ON DATABASE xxx TO GROUP ,
you will need to revoke this separately from DROP OWNED BY, using:
REVOKE CONNECT ON DATABASE xxx FROM GROUP

This worked for me:
DROP OWNED BY dbuser
and then:
DROP USER dbuser

I had to add one more line to REVOKE...
After running:
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public FROM username;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA public FROM username;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA public FROM username;
I was still receiving the error:
username cannot be dropped because some objects depend on it DETAIL: privileges for schema public
I was missing this:
REVOKE USAGE ON SCHEMA public FROM username;
Then I was able to drop the role.
DROP USER username;

There is no REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL VIEWS, so I ended with:
do $$
DECLARE r record;
begin
for r in select * from pg_views where schemaname = 'myschem'
loop
execute 'revoke all on ' || quote_ident(r.schemaname) ||'.'|| quote_ident(r.viewname) || ' from "XUSER"';
end loop;
end $$;
and usual:
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE mydb FROM "XUSER";
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA myschem FROM "XUSER";
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA myschem FROM "XUSER";
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA myschem FROM "XUSER";
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA myschem FROM "XUSER";
for the following to succeed:
drop role "XUSER";

This should work:
REVOKE ALL ON SCHEMA public FROM myuser;
REVOKE ALL ON DATABASE mydb FROM myuser;
DROP USER myuser;

In commandline, there is a command dropuser available to do drop user from postgres.
$ dropuser someuser

https://dbtut.com/index.php/2018/07/09/role-x-cannot-be-dropped-because-some-objects-depend-on-it/
Checked and there was no ownership for any object in db and later realised it may be due to foreign data wrapper mapping created for user and grant permission.
So two actions were required
Drop user mapping
Revoke usage on foreign data wrapper.
sample queries
DROP USER MAPPING FOR username SERVER foreignservername
REVOKE ALL ON FOREIGN SERVER foreignservername FROM username

The Postgres documentation has a clear answer to this - this is the ONLY sanctioned answer:
REASSIGN OWNED BY doomed_role TO successor_role;
DROP OWNED BY doomed_role;
-- repeat the above commands in each database of the cluster
DROP ROLE doomed_role;
Key points:
-- repeat the above commands in each database of the cluster
"it's typically necessary to run both REASSIGN OWNED and DROP OWNED (in that order!) to fully remove the dependencies of a role to be dropped."

I faced the same problem and now found a way to solve it.
First you have to delete the database of the user that you wish to drop. Then the user can be easily deleted.
I created an user named "msf" and struggled a while to delete the user and recreate it. I followed the below steps and Got succeeded.
1) Drop the database
dropdb msf
2) drop the user
dropuser msf
Now I got the user successfully dropped.

Related

Safely drop a user in Postgres

I am very new to Postgress security topic. I have used the following commands to create a user.
CREATE USER myuser WITH PASSWORD 'PASSWORD';
GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE "MyDB" TO myuser;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE "MyDB" TO myuser;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO myuser;
Immediately afterwards I wanted to drop this user by I receive an error similar to:
ERROR: role "tempuser" cannot be dropped because some objects depend on it
DETAIL:
privileges for view myView
privileges for table myTable
... [rest of views and tables]
It kinda scares me. How can I safely drop a user without affecting the data and other objects in database?
Reverse each of your GRANT with a corresponding REVOKE.
It kinda scares me. How can I safely drop a user without affecting the data and other objects in database?
If you consider a REVOKE to be "affecting the objects", then you can't drop the user without affecting the objects. Why does this scare you? As you can see, the system won't let you do this implicitly, so what is there to be scared of?

PostgreSQL - Grant DEFAULT PRIVILEGES database-wide and revoke them just for a specific schema

I am experiencing a weird and (to me) inexplicable behaviour related to DEFAULT PRIVILEGES. It seems default privileges cannot be revoked just for a specific schema once they have been granted database-wide.
I am currently testing this with PostgreSQL 10.5 on CentOS.
Let's say there are 3 users:
admin Owner of the database. Used to manipulate the STRUCTURE of the database (CREATE, DROP, TRUNCATE...)
manager Used for DATA manipulation (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE)
reader Used to read DATA (basically SELECT)
The idea is that:
admin will be the owner of the database and all the objects contained into it
manager will be used for data manipulation across all schemas but public (only user admin can modify data in public schema)
reader will be able to read everything.
To make things easier, this will rely on default privileges, so that newly created objects (schemas, tables, views, functions, etc.) will all have the correct permissions.
This is the first time I am trying something like that instead of a fine-grained permissions policy based on multiple users for all different schemas and apparently this setup should be very straightforward.
It turns out I am missing something.
Here is a simple test script. User admin is the owner of db database and all those commands are issued being connected to it as admin:
-- 1. User manager inherits from user "reader"
GRANT reader TO manager;
-- 2. Allow connections to the database to our users, but not PUBLIC
REVOKE ALL ON DATABASE db FROM PUBLIC;
GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE db TO reader;
-- 3. Revoke default privileges from PUBLIC
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES REVOKE ALL ON SCHEMAS FROM PUBLIC;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES REVOKE ALL ON TABLES FROM PUBLIC;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES REVOKE ALL ON SEQUENCES FROM PUBLIC;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES REVOKE ALL ON FUNCTIONS FROM PUBLIC;
-- 4. Grant default reading privileges to user "reader"
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMAS TO reader;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES GRANT SELECT ON TABLES TO reader;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES GRANT SELECT ON SEQUENCES TO reader;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES GRANT EXECUTE ON FUNCTIONS TO reader;
-- 5. Grant Defauly writing privileges to user "manager"
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES GRANT INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON TABLES TO manager;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES GRANT USAGE ON SEQUENCES TO manager;
-- 6. Reinit "public" schema
DROP SCHEMA public;
CREATE SCHEMA public;
-- 7. HERE COMES THE WEIRD STUFF, the two following statements don't have any effect at all
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA public REVOKE INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON TABLES FROM manager;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA public REVOKE USAGE ON SEQUENCES FROM manager;
This can be easily verified like that:
-- Execute as user "admin":
CREATE TABLE public.t (id serial PRIMARY KEY, dummy integer)
-- Execute as user "manager" (it should not be allowed, but it is!)
DELETE FROM public.t;
I know I could circumvent this using some trigger functions, but the point of the question is whether this is something normal and expected, some sort of bug or am I missing something?
I have been thinking about it and the most elegant solution I could come up with relies on an Event Trigger.
Of course it does not answer my question directly, meaning that I am still wondering why default privileges cannot be used like that, but at least this meets the initial requirement of set-and-forget that default privileges would have provided.
Create a function that revokes unwanted privileges and returns an event_trigger:
CREATE FUNCTION reset_privileges() RETURNS event_trigger AS $$
BEGIN
IF EXISTS (SELECT true FROM pg_event_trigger_ddl_commands() WHERE schema_name = 'public') THEN
REVOKE INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public FROM manager;
REVOKE USAGE ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA public FROM manager;
END IF;
END;
$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql;
Create an actual EVENT TRIGGER (This requires superuser privileges!):
CREATE EVENT TRIGGER reset_public_schema_privileges
ON ddl_command_end WHEN TAG IN (
'CREATE TABLE',
'CREATE TABLE AS',
'CREATE VIEW',
'CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW',
'CREATE FUNCTION'
) EXECUTE PROCEDURE reset_privileges();
The function checks whether the newly created object(s) are in the public schema and eventually revokes all the unwanted privileges from the user manager.
It does not even bother to filter those objects, but rather it revokes the privileges for ALL TABLEs, VIEWs and FUNCTIONs in the public schema. Of course it can be easily customised using the object_identity field provided by pg_event_trigger_ddl_commands and a more refined logic inside the function.
According to the manual for ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES:
Default privileges that are specified per-schema are added to whatever the global default privileges are for the particular object type. This means you cannot revoke privileges per-schema if they are granted globally (either by default, or according to a previous ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES command that did not specify a schema). Per-schema REVOKE is only useful to reverse the effects of a previous per-schema GRANT.
(This is even more explicit in the examples given on that manual page.)
So I think what is happening is that in step 5 of your script, you are setting the default privilege to grant DELETE on the tables of all schemas (as a global default):
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES GRANT INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON TABLES TO manager;
But in step 7 you are revoking from the public schema specifically. This revocation has no effect on the global grant, so the DELETE (and other) privileges will still be granted:
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA public REVOKE INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ON TABLES FROM manager;
I think I would either (a) bite the bullet and add default privileges for each schema (which isn't "fire-and-forget" but is more explicit) or (b) challenge why I need the public schema to exist, aiming to remove it to simplify this situation.

Permission denied for relation <table_name>

So I'm making this app and I'm using Postgres and I've already created a database, a user and a password and granted all privileges on the database to the user I've created.
The thing is, when I switch the database in psql using \c <database_name> I get in just fine and can use queries on it.
But when I run psql using postgres://user_name:password#localhost:5432/databasename on terminal and try to select * from the <table_name> it gives me this message
permission denied for relation <table_name>
Can you please tell me what to do, I've had this problem before and I had to create another database or change the user but I want a better solution please.
PS: I've tried to use this :
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON TABLE <table_name> to <user_name>
This is how I created and accessed my database:
rawan95=# create database food ;
CREATE DATABASE
rawan95=# create user meal with password '123';
CREATE ROLE
rawan95=# grant all privileges on database food to meal;
GRANT
rawan95=# \c food
You are now connected to database "food" as user "rawan95".
After that, I've built it using
food=# \i src/database/db_build.sql
BEGIN
DROP TABLE
CREATE TABLE
INSERT 0 1
COMMIT
Then I selected data from the table just fine, but when I try to access it using this, I get an error: psql postgres://meal:123#localhost:5432/food
food=> select * from foods;
ERROR: permission denied for relation foods
You are granting the privileges before you create the tables.
As there are no tables at that moment nothing is granted. The tables you created are not owned by the user meal but the user rawan95 (which the \c command told you).
Plus: granting "all privileges" on a database, does not grant any select privilege. As documented in the manual "all privileges" are: CREATE, CONNECT, TEMPORARY, TEMP. The CREATE privilege would allow the user meal to create tables in that database.
If you want all those tables to be owned by the user meal you need to run your setup script after you connected as the user meal (the \c command did not change the current user)
If you do want rawan95 to be the owner of the tables, you need to either grant the select privilege after creating all tables:
grant select on all tables in schema public to meal;
Or, you can change the default privilege before creating the tables (before running db_build.sql), so that they are applied to all tables in the future:
alter default privileges in schema public
grant select on all tables to meal;
The alter default privileges only has an effect for tables that are created after that. So to fix your current setup, you need to first grant select on the existing tables, and the change the default privileges for all tables that are created in the future.
Have you granted usage on the schema? Without that the table permissions are useless.
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA schema_name TO username
EDIT: Based on comment thread below we have established.
The table is in public schema.
The table belongs to rawan95 but the schema does not (public schema belongs to root postgres user).
The OP is attempting to connect and access the table as user 'meal' they have granted table permissions using the rawan95 user but are unable to grant schema permissions.
From the above, the problem could still be that the user 'meal' does not have usage on the public schema. If you are on Linux the quickest way to sort this is to switch to the super user to make this change from terminal:
sudo -u postgres psql -c "GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO meal"
FURTHER EDIT - having read your new clarification this is not correct (or at least not useful). The issue is as pointed out by the other answerer that you didn't have a table at the time you did the grant.

PostgreSQL Revoking Permissions from pg_catalog tables

Is there a way I can revoke permissions from a user to the catalog objects (i.e. information_schema) and PostgreSQL tables (i.e. pg_catalog)? I've tried several things and scoured the net. I'm not having any luck. The only thing I read that is partially helpful is I may not want to remove "public" from the system tables in case user defined functions rely on an object in one of those schemas. The commands below are a small snap shot of what I have not gotten to work with the exception of a single table.
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA pg_catalog FROM PUBLIC; -- didn't work
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA pg_catalog FROM public; -- didn't work
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA pg_catalog FROM user1; -- didn't work
REVOKE SELECT ON pg_catalog.pg_roles FROM user1; -- worked
REVOKE SELECT ON pg_catalog.pg_database FROM user1; -- didn't work
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON SCHEMA pg_catalog FROM g_users; -- didn't work
REVOKE SELECT ON pg_catalog.pg_database FROM g_users; -- didn't work
Any ideas? Or is this just not possible? Thanks...
Leslie
let me help you about this:
1st: because the pg_catalog is owned by the superuser postgres, so make sure you login to the server with this role:
pg_catalog schema permission
2nd: make sure you connect to the right database that needs to GRANT/REVOKE permissions on. GRANT/REVOKE only affect to the current database that you connected to. That means after you login with superuser account, issue: \c [the db] to connect to that database, the shell will change to: [the db]=>
3rd: tables in pg_catalog defaults granted SELECT to PUBLIC: tables in pg_catalog. So, you have to run REVOKE SELECT FROM PUBLIC and then GRANT SELECT to appropriate users:
REVOKE SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA pg_catalog FROM PUBLIC;
GRANT SELECT ON TABLE [table] TO [user];
For list tables in a database: pg_class and pg_namespace.
And that's all :)
What you are trying to accomplish is denied in PostgreSQL by design.
If a user could not access pg_catalog schema (as you try to do with REVOKE commands), he/she would not be able to run even simplest SELECT query - planner would have no access to table definitions.
Your goal might be achieved by REVOKE'ing access to all schemas - hence locking user only in his private schema (with CREATE SCHEMA AUTHORIZATION username).
If any rights are already GRANT'ed to public, you cannot block them selectively for one user - you can only REVOKE ... FROM public.
Relevant documentation:
Creating a Schema
Schemas and Privileges

Postgres create database user with grant access to schema only

I have a database with a template_schema.I cloned this template schema and created a database user with password. I need to provide access to cloned schema only, for the created user.
SELECT clone_schema('my_template_schema','john_smith_gmail_com');
CREATE USER john_smith_gmail_com WITH PASSWORD 'mypassword';
Upto this Ok. Then I need to grant access to this user for this cloned schema(john_smith_gmail_com) only
Method :1
I tried to revoke all privileges on all tables of cloned schema(john_smith_gmail_com) for the user and grant select to the user. But my question is, can this user get SELECT access on other schema tables?
REVOKE ALL ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA john_smith_gmail_com FROM john_smith_gmail_com;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA john_smith_gmail_com TO john_smith_gmail_com;
Method :2
Create a role with only SELECT access and assign or grant this role to newly created user. If I do this, for which schema I grant access,because I clone schema dynamically?
Which method is best one?
From postgresql version 9.0 and forward, the best way is probably to use ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES.
...the default privileges for any object type normally grant all grantable permissions to the object owner, and may grant some privileges to PUBLIC as well. However, this behavior can be changed by altering the global default privileges with ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES.
So if all users like "john_smith_gmail_com" should only have SELECT access to tables in "their own" schema, after creating the schema and user, you can run:
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA john_smith_gmail_com GRANT SELECT ON TABLES TO john_smith_gmail_com;