Package: drupal Version: 4.5.2-1 Severity: normal Drupal ostensibly supports postgresql, but its use of the PEAR::DB DSN scheme for configuration the database connection is incomplete, and cannot support connection to a pgsql server via a UNIX domain socket, since the DSN scheme for specifying one is not supported by PHP's parse_url() function used by drupal to connect. The PEAR::DB DSN scheme Drupal claims to support is described here: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.database.db.intro-dsn.php In this scheme, the syntax for specifying a connection to a pgsql domain socket should be (I have no idea who thought this syntax was a good idea): pgsql://username:password@unix(/var/run/postgresql)/dbname Which is parsed by parse_sql as: % php -r 'print_r(parse_url("pgsql://username:password@unix(/var/run/postgresql)/dbname"));' Array ( [scheme] => pgsql [host] => unix( [user] => username [pass] => password [path] => /var/run/postgresql)/dbname ) However, Drupal's actual implementation is thus: function db_connect($url) { $url = parse_url($url); $conn_string = ' user='. $url['user'] .' dbname='. substr($url['path'], 1) .' password='. $url['pass'] . ' host=' . $url['host']; $conn_string .= ($url['port']) ? ' port=' . $url['port'] : ''; $connection = pg_connect($conn_string) or die(pg_last_error()); return $connection; } Which leads to a $conn_string of: " user=username dbname=var/run/postgresql)/dbname password=password host=unix(" -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable') Architecture: sparc (sparc64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.6 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Versions of packages drupal depends on: ii apache2-mpm-prefork [apache2] 2.0.52-3 Traditional model for Apache2 ii debconf 1.4.30.11 Debian configuration management sy ii makepasswd 1.10-2 Generate and encrypt passwords ii php4-cli 4:4.3.10-2 command-line interpreter for the p ii php4-pgsql 3:4.3.9-1 PostgreSQL module for php4 ii postgresql-client 7.4.7-2 front-end programs for PostgreSQL ii qmail [mail-transport-agent] 1.03-31 Secure, reliable, efficient, simpl ii wwwconfig-common 0.0.42 Debian web auto configuration -- debconf information: * drupal/remove_backups: false drupal/createuser_failed: * drupal/db_auto_update: false drupal/dropdb_failed: drupal/upgradedb_impossible: * drupal/dbgeneration: false * drupal/dbtype: PostgreSQL * drupal/database_doremove: false drupal/createdb_failed: * drupal/dbserver: localhost * drupal/webserver: apache2 drupal/upgradedb_failed: * drupal/dbname: drupal * drupal/dbuser: drupal drupal/dbadmin: root drupal/initdb_failed: drupal/conffile_failed: