Save As MySQL is crashing gnucash

[Geert Janssens]

On Friday 26 November 2010, Robert Heller wrote:
> At Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:51:18 -0800 (PST) Phil Longstaff 
<plongstaff at rogers.com> wrote:
> > That's not quite OK.  If a new version of gnucash is released which
> > requires a changed db schema, gnucash will try to automatically add new
> > columns and constraints.  This might mean we will need to package schema
> > upgrades as a separate utility to be run by the dba.
> 
> There is no reason to disallow a *user* from adding/dropping tables or
> altering tables (adding/removing columns, etc.).  Allowing mere *users*
> the privs to add/drop *databases* is the security issue.  The gnucash
> application should not be creating the database itself, only tables, etc.
> 
As said before, this all depends on the context.

I have only two things to add regarding creation and dropping rights:

1. MySql's privilege system is very fine grained. It can be configured 
perfectly fine to have a certain user only master a limited set of databases
- including creation and deletion of those databases - while the same user 
doesn't have any privileges on other databases. That leaves a nice 
middleground for some use cases.

2. Environments with strict security policies still need an administrator 
account for their database server, only known to a limited set of 
administrators. I think that in such environments, it will indeed be an 
administrator that initially sets up the database and other users access it 
via less privileged accounts. As John already suggested, in such environments 
an administrator should run GnuCash and open the db once after each gnucash 
update. I believe it would be sufficient to document this clearly.


Geert