remote management reports "read: 3 Connection reset by peer"

[fluca1978]

I'm trying to figure out how to use pgagroal-cli remotely, so I could have mess something.
However, running version 7918ce4 and doing this:

• start pgagroal
• remove the /etc/pgagroal/pgagroal.conf configuration file
• invoke pgagroal-cli on localhost:

$ pgagroal-cli  -h localhost -p 5432 -U luca details
Password : 
WARN  management.c:553 pgagroal_management_read_status: read: 3 Connection reset by peer
WARN  management.c:695 pgagroal_management_read_details: read: 3 Invalid argument

$ pgagroal-cli  -h localhost -p 5432 -U luca is-alive
Password : 
WARN  management.c:947 pgagroal_management_read_isalive: read: 3 Connection reset by peer

On the log of pgagroal (running at debug level):

DEBUG pool.c:1193 pgagroal_pool_status: State: IN_USE
DEBUG pool.c:1194                       Slot: 3
DEBUG pool.c:1195                       Server: 0
DEBUG pool.c:1196                       User: luca
DEBUG pool.c:1197                       Database: admin
DEBUG pool.c:1198                       AppName: pgagroal
DEBUG pool.c:1199                       Rule: -1
DEBUG pool.c:1200                       Time: Wed Jun 15 06:18:45 2022
DEBUG pool.c:1201                       FD: 6
(libev) epoll_wait: Bad file descriptor

I'm not understanding how to use remote management, since it appear an admin database.

[jesperpedersen]

Moved to "General".

Remote management is for access from an internal network, where you don't have access to the machine/VM/... itself.

You should not delete the configuration, and the "admin" database is a "virtual" one.

I havn't ported the tutorials yet, but you can look at https://github.com/pgmoneta/pgmoneta/blob/main/doc/tutorial/03_remote_management.md - it will be similar.

[fluca1978]

It seems to me I'm doing either something wrong or pgagroal-cli is not taking into account the host and port options.
Having cofnigured management = 6432, and running pgagroal, the following seems to do the trick:

$ pgagroal-cli -h localhost -p 6432 status
Status:              Running
Active connections:  0
Total connections:   1
Max connections:     4

but it is not using the networkng layer, and in fact, if I use the wrong port:

$ pgagroal-cli -h localhost -p 2345 status
Status:              Running
Active connections:  0
Total connections:   1
Max connections:     4

it works again!
The problem seems to be here https://github.com/agroal/pgagroal/blob/master/src/cli.c#L416: since the program finds the configuration file (and correctly loads it), it does not honor remote management parameters.

If I remove the configuration file, then it asks for a remote user and a password:

# while pgagroal is running..
$ mv /etc/pgagroal/pgagroal.conf /etc/pgagroal/pgagroal.conf.old

$ pgagroal-cli -h localhost -p 6432 status
User name: luca
Password : 
Status:              Running
Active connections:  0
Total connections:   1
Max connections:     4

So i went thru a couple of potential issues:

1. even if management is configured, on localhost the pgagroal-cli does not honor the host and port options, preferring the local connection as first. This in my opinion is a bug.
2. I named the file badly, so instead of pgagroal_admins.conf I named if pgagroal_admin_users.conf. In such case, the remote management was telling me bad credentials. I think the system should report back that there are no users configured at all.
3. last, we need to document a little more this usage.

[jesperpedersen]

1. Yes, we need configuration_path != NULL && host == NULL && port == NULL in L416 - plus some other checks likely
2. You can use any file name with -A - default will always be /etc/pgagroal/pgagroal_admins.conf. There is a WARN if management is set, and there are no admin users. We should not reply with unknown user as it could lead to attacks.
3. Yes, I'll add a tutorial on the subject