pglistener-update(1)

🎀 pglistener-update(1) — the postgres listener page bestie 💖

okay so we're doing the manual page for pglistener-update, aka the postgres listener. yes it's a manpage. no it does not have to be boring. let's go ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

pglistener-update — postgres listener. that's it, that's the name, short and iconic 👑

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so pglistener-update is a daemon that generates files from a Postgres database. yes, a daemon. it's giving background-process main character energy 🦋

it's a tool that listens for notifies from a Postgres database, and then — this is the fun part — it calls out to a bunch of hooks that do everything from updating the password database to updating accounts in RT. like, it hears a notify and immediately goes "say less, i'm on it" 💅

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✨ USAGE ✨

config and hooks live under:

/var/lib/pglistener
/var/lib/pglistener/hooks
/etc/pglistener
/etc/pglistener/conf.d

good news bestie: it is fine to restart postgres while pglistener is running. no drama, no chaos 💖

and if pglistener crashes for whatever reason (it happens, we don't judge 🙈), it can be restarted as a normal service. so casual.

in general? pglistener can be restarted at any time — it's quick to start, and there are no interruptions to services or authentication. we love a low-maintenance icon 🫶

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🌈 SETTING UP 🌈

first step: install a usable pglistener config in /etc/pglistener/pglistener.conf, and it should be mode 600, user pglistener. lock it down, bestie 🔒

then make symlinks for databases in /var/lib/misc:

cd /var/lib/misc
ln -s ../pglistener/group.db
ln -s ../pglistener/passwd.db
ln -s ../pglistener/shadow.db

if you have ssh keys for everybody on the host, add the following two lines to /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

AuthorizedKeysFile /root/%u/.ssh/authorized_keys
AuthorizedKeysFile2 /var/lib/misc/sshkeys/%u

and make sure pam_mkhomedir is set up — /etc/pam.d/common-session should contain:

session required pam_mkhomedir.so

that's the whole setup, periodt ✨

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

the pglistener-update was written by:

• Rob Bradford <rob@robster.org.uk>
• Robert McQueen <robert.mcqueen@bluelinux.co.uk>
• Dafydd Harries <dafydd.harries@collabora.co.uk>
• Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@err.no>
• Maxime Buquet <pep@bouah.net>
• Jordi Mallach <jordi@debian.org>
• Vivek Das Mohapatra <vivek.dasmohapatra@collabora.com>
• Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana <phls@debian.org>
• Bruna Pinos de Oliveira <bruna.pinos@collabora.com>
• Mark Kennedy <mark.kennedy@collabora.com>
• Stelios Milidonis <stelios.milidonis@collabora.com>

for a complete list of authors, please open the AUTHORS file 👀

and this manual page was written by Paulo Henrique de Lima Santana (phls) <phls@debian.org> for the Debian project (but may be used by others). shoutout to phls, absolute legend 🫶💜

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and that's the page, bestie!! this was PGLISTENER-UPDATE version 5.1, from Apr 2024, part of the pglistener-update(1) manual 💖 go forth and listen to those notifies, no cap 🌟