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Creating the Springtail user

To read the logical replication stream, Springtail requires a user account in your existing primary PostgreSQL instance. We recommend creating a new user specifically for Springtail.

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Option 1: Superuser access

Creating a user with SUPERUSER privileges allows Springtail to fully manage replication slots, publications, and triggers for the logical replication stream.

In Amazon RDS, the user must be granted the rds_superuser role.

To create this user, use the following command, replacing <secret_password> with your desired password:

CREATE USER springtail WITH PASSWORD '<secret_password>' LOGIN role rds_superuser

Make sure you use a strong password, and keep it handy for instance setup.

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Option 2: Read-only user

Alternatively, you can create a read-only user with restricted access. This user needs:

  • CONNECT access to the databases to be replicated.

  • SELECT access to tables within those databases for replication purposes.

  • SELECT access to the tables in the pg_catalog schema. These are queried to determine schema of the replicated tables and by the proxy when a user authenticates.

By default all users have access to the tables within the pg_catalog schema that Springtail requires. However, if you are not using the default permissions, the Springtail user will require access to: pg_class, pg_namespace, pg_attribute, pg_index, pg_collation, pg_type, pg_constraint, pg_database, pg_roles

  • REPLICATION role to start replication and query the replication slot (or rds_replication role in AWS).

In this case, you will need to set up and manage replication slots, publications, and triggers manually. Springtail will provide scripts to perform these tasks, but you’ll be responsible for executing them correctly.

To create this user, use the following command, replacing <secret_password> with your desired password:

CREATE USER springtail WITH PASSWORD '<secret_password>' ROLE rds_replication;

After creating the user, grant CONNECT access to each database:

GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE <your_database> TO springtail;

Finally, connect to each database and grant SELECT access:

# To grant access to a single table
GRANT SELECT ON <table_name> TO springtail;

# To grant access to all of the tables in a schema
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA <schema> TO springtail;

Make sure you use a strong password, and keep it handy for instance setup.

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Replication slots, publications, triggers and functions

To set up logical replication in each database, Springtail creates one publication, one replication slot, and two triggers that utilize three custom functions.

  • A publication in PostgreSQL captures a set of changes (inserts, updates, and deletes) made to a specific table or set of tables in a database that can be sent to subscribers for replication. This is what defines the set of tables being replicated and captures their changes.

  • A replication slot in PostgreSQL ensures that the changes made in the primary database are retained until they are consumed by a subscriber. It acts as a buffer that stores the changes for a subscriber until they are applied. This ensures that Springtail does not miss any changes to the data, even in the face of network disconnect, database restart, or other such issues.

  • The triggers are created to capture schema changes within the database by emitting custom messages into the replication stream that Springtail can use to keep it’s copy of the schemas up-to-date. It also ensures that tables created without a primary key are marked with REPLICA IDENTITY FULL which will ensure that the entire row is sent whenever updates or deletes are performed against the table.

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Authenticating existing users in Springtail

Springtail authenticates users when they log in to the Springtail Proxy. Springtail’s Proxy performs user authentication based on the users that exist in the Primary database and only allows those users that have CONNECT access to query the replicated database. The Proxy connects to both the Primary database as well as the Springtail replica in order to perform read/write splitting (sending writes to the Primary database, while sending reads to the Springtail replica).

The Proxy caches the set of users and the databases to which they have access, and refreshes this data every few seconds by querying the Primary database. Currently, no other access checks are performed on users accessing replicated data (i.e., row level permissions and table level access checks are not performed). The Proxy authentication is 2-phased. In the first phase, the client or application authenticates with the Proxy (the Proxy is acting as the server); in the second phase, the Proxy authenticates with the Primary / replica (the Proxy is acting as the client). The Proxy uses the same username/password for both phases of authentication and the password is verified in each phase; if either phase fails, the client is denied access.

When setting up a database instance, Springtail requires a list of users, including their username and password, that will be logging in via the Proxy. The username and password must match the Primary database’s version (i.e., that user must be able to log into the primary using that username and password). The password can be supplied in one of three forms: plain text, MD5 hash, or SCRAM-SHA-256 hash. The MD5 and SCRAM hashes can be obtained by querying the pg_shadow database tables; unfortunately, this table is not accessible on AWS RDS or Aurora instances. If using a MD5 or SCRAM hash as the password, the Primary database must be setup to accept that form of authentication for that user. Using a SCRAM hash is the most secure, as the hash by itself is not sufficient to log into the Primary (it is combined with a client secret that is extracted by the Proxy when the client authenticates to the Proxy).