Installed postgres on Debian 10 using
# apt install postgres postgres-contrib
Can connect to it after setting the password for the postgres user
# passwd postgres
...
# su postgres
$ cd
$ pwd /var/lib/postgresql
$ psql
psql (11.17 (Debian 11.17-0+deb10u1))
Type "help" for help.
postgres=# \conninfo
You are connected to database "postgres" as user "postgres" via socket in "/var/run/postgresql" at port "5432".
postgres=#
I've installed pgAdmin on Windows and SSH into Debian with port forwarding -L 5432:localhost:5432 but pgAdmin complains that the password (that I've just set) is incorrect.
I've tried
postgres=# ALTER USER postgres PASSWORD 'password'
but it doesn't make any difference.
Update
This is suspicious; it doesn't even a password?
# psql -U postgres
psql: FATAL: Peer authentication failed for user "postgres"
Update 2
Tried to create a second user
# CREATE ROLE sa WITH LOGIN SUPERUSER PASSWORD 'password'
For some reason the psql command now asks for a password, but it does not accept the (correct) password
# psql -U sa
Password for user sa:
psql: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "sa"
I notice that \du lists only one user, postgres and not also the second user that I thought I'd created.
This is such shit.
You are running PostgreSQL over a Unix socket. pgAdmin needs a TCP/IP connection. You can fix this by making the necessary changes to postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf. Note that PostgreSQL on Unix runs over a socket by default so you have to explicitly indicate that you want to use a TCP/IP connection. Also, make sure to restart the server after making any changes
I am using psql to connect to a PostgreSQL database on Debian 10. I am trying to connect as the postgres user, to the default postgres database. By default, this is using the 'peer' authentication method, which does not require a password.
If I log in using the 'peer' authentication and set a password using the following command:
ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'myPassword';
The query executes successfully, however when I edit pg_hba.conf to change the authentication method from:
local all postgres peer
to:
local all postgres scram-sha-256
and restart the server, I get the following error:
~$ sudo -u postgres psql postgres
Password for user postgres:
psql: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "postgres"
~$
Does anyone know how to do this?
To change the authentication method in PostgreSQL:
Open a terminal window
Change into the postgres bin directory
Example: cd /usr/local/pgsql/bin
Note: Depending on your install environment the path to the bin directory may vary.
Type su – postgres and press Enter. This will change the logged in to the postgres user.
From the bin directory type ./psql
Type:
ALTER USER your_username password 'new_password'; and press Enter. ALTER ROLE should be displayed.
Type \q and press Enter
Open /path_to_data_directory/pg_hba.conf
Example: /etc/postgresql/11/main/pg_hba.conf
Modify the line at the bottom of the config file to resemble one of these examples.
Note: You will probably only have to change the word trust to md5. The line or lines should already exist.
host all postgres peer
host all your_username your.ip your.subnet md5
Save the changes
Restart PostgreSQL service with systemctl restart postgresql.service
Before you assign the password, you probably need to set the password_encryption to "scram-sha-256". Otherwise, you stored the password in the md5 format, and such a password cannot be used to login when pg_hba.conf calls for "scram-sha-256".
The default setting of password_encryption is still md5. It will change to be "scram-sha-256" in v14.
The error message sent to the unauthenticated user is intentionally vague. The error message in the server log file will probably say DETAIL: User "postgres" does not have a valid SCRAM secret. (If it does not, then ignore this answer, and edit your question to tell us what it does say)
You need to 1st in the shell change to be the "postgres" user which you're not doing correctly above:
sudo su - postgres
Then you can do the following as peer auth:
psql -d postgres -U postgres
Also recommend you set a pw for postgres sql user:
\password postgres
& change the authentication method to "md5", not "peer".
I created a phoenix project from the hello example using digital ocean. I entered the username and password from the etc/motd.tail file. I keep getting the error message below. I am a beginner and for some reason I just cannot get ecto to install correctly.
** (Mix) The database for Hello.Repo couldn't be created, reason given: psql: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "elixir"
FATAL: password authentication failed for user "elixir"
You can use the following Postgress database credentials:
* User: elixir
* Pass: ***
install. Any help would be appreciated.
I get the same error using Ubuntu 14.04 and I corrected resetting the 'postgres' password:
$ sudo -u postgres psql -c "ALTER USER postgres PASSWORD 'postgres';"
and restart postgres service:
sudo service postgresql restart
I assume this error is happening on the mix ecto.create task?
This happens because Ecto uses psql to create the database, however this is no longer the case in the upcoming Ecto 2.0.
The following GitHub issue shows the same issue https://github.com/elixir-lang/ecto/issues/1207
The relevant comment with the fix is https://github.com/elixir-lang/ecto/issues/1207#issuecomment-172570064:
My database config (pg_hba.conf) was apparently wrong.
For anyone else encountering this:
host all my_user 127.0.0.1/32 trust will not work
host all my_user localhost trust will work
Please check your pg_hba.conf (likely in /etc/postsgresql/9.x/pg_hba.conf).
We just need to create a new postgresql username and password according to the files inside config folder using this db method
$ sudo -u postgres createuser <username>
$ sudo -u postgres createdb <dbname>
$ sudo -u postgres psql
psql=# alter user <username> with encrypted password '<password>';
psql=# grant all privileges on database <dbname> to <username> ;
I needed to update the pg_hba.conf to make this work.
I am using Fedora, so get to /var/lib/pgsql/data
# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local all postgres peer
local all all md5
# IPv4 local connections:
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 md5
# IPv6 local connections:
host all all ::1/128 ident
Then I created an elixir user in postgres with databse creation capabilities and configured it in dev.exs (user/password/database)
How do I change the password for a PostgreSQL user?
To log in without a password:
sudo -u user_name psql db_name
To reset the password if you have forgotten:
ALTER USER user_name WITH PASSWORD 'new_password';
To change the PostgreSQL user's password, follow these steps:
log in into the psql console:
sudo -u postgres psql
Then in the psql console, change the password and quit:
postgres=# \password postgres
Enter new password: <new-password>
postgres=# \q
Or using a query:
ALTER USER postgres PASSWORD '<new-password>';
Or in one line
sudo -u postgres psql -c "ALTER USER postgres PASSWORD '<new-password>';"
Note:
If that does not work, reconfigure authentication by editing /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf (the path will differ) and change:
local all all peer # change this to md5
to
local all all md5 # like this
Then restart the server:
sudo service postgresql restart
You can and should have the users' password encrypted:
ALTER USER username WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'password';
I believe the best way to change the password is simply to use:
\password
in the Postgres console.
Per ALTER USER documentation:
Caution must be exercised when specifying an unencrypted password with
this command. The password will be transmitted to the server in
cleartext, and it might also be logged in the client's command history
or the server log. psql contains a command \password that can be used
to change a role's password without exposing the cleartext password.
Note: ALTER USER is an alias for ALTER ROLE
To change the password using the Linux command line, use:
sudo -u <user_name> psql -c "ALTER USER <user_name> PASSWORD '<new_password>';"
To the change password:
sudo -u postgres psql
Then
\password postgres
Now enter the new password and confirm.
Then \q to exit.
Go to your PostgreSQL configuration and edit file pg_hba.conf:
sudo vim /etc/postgresql/9.3/main/pg_hba.conf
Then change this line:
Database administrative login by Unix domain socket
local all postgres md5
to:
Database administrative login by Unix domain socket
local all postgres peer
Then restart the PostgreSQL service via the 'sudo' command. Then
psql -U postgres
You will be now entered and will see the PostgreSQL terminal.
Then enter
\password
And enter the new password for the PostgreSQL default user. After successfully changing the password again, go to the pg_hba.conf and revert the change to "md5".
Now you will be logged in as
psql -U postgres
with your new password.
Setting up a password for the postgres role
sudo -u postgres psql
You will get a prompt like the following:
postgres=#
Change password to PostgreSQL for user postgres
ALTER USER postgres WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'postgres';
You will get something as follows:
ALTER ROLE
To do this we need to edit the pg_hba.conf file.
(Feel free to replace nano with an editor of your choice.)
sudo nano /etc/postgresql/9.5/main/pg_hba.conf
Update in the pg_hba.conf file
Look for an uncommented line (a line that doesn’t start with #) that has the contents shown below. The spacing will be slightly different, but the words should be the same.
local postgres postgres peer
to
local postgres postgres md5
Now we need to restart PostgreSQL, so the changes take effect
sudo service postgresql restart
To request a new password for the postgres user (without showing it in the command):
sudo -u postgres psql -c "\password"
This was the first result on google, when I was looking how to rename a user, so:
ALTER USER <username> WITH PASSWORD '<new_password>'; -- change password
ALTER USER <old_username> RENAME TO <new_username>; -- rename user
A couple of other commands helpful for user management:
CREATE USER <username> PASSWORD '<password>' IN GROUP <group>;
DROP USER <username>;
Move user to another group
ALTER GROUP <old_group> DROP USER <username>;
ALTER GROUP <new_group> ADD USER <username>;
If you are on Windows.
Open pg_hba.conf file and change from md5 to peer.
Open cmd and type psql postgres postgres.
Then type \password to be prompted for a new password.
Refer to this Medium post for further information & granular steps.
The configuration that I've got on my server was customized a lot, and I managed to change the password only after I set trust authentication in the pg_hba.conf file:
local all all trust
Don't forget to change this back to password or md5.
For my case on Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr), installed with PostgreSQL 10.3: I need to follow the following steps
su - postgres to switch the user to postgres
psql to enter the PostgreSQL shell
\password and then enter your password
Q to quit the shell session
Then you switch back to root by executing exit and configure your pg_hba.conf (mine is at /etc/postgresql/10/main/pg_hba.conf) by making sure you have the following line
local all postgres md5
Restart your PostgreSQL service by service postgresql restart
Now switch to the postgres user and enter the PostgreSQL shell again. It will prompt you for a password.
Use this:
\password
Enter the new password you want for that user and then confirm it.
If you don't remember the password and you want to change it, you can log in as "postgres" and then use this:
ALTER USER 'the username' WITH PASSWORD 'the new password';
TLDR:
On many systems, a user's account often contains a period, or some sort of punctuation (user: john.smith, horise.johnson). In these cases, a modification will have to be made to the accepted answer above. The change requires the username to be double-quoted.
Example
ALTER USER "username.lastname" WITH PASSWORD 'password';
Rationale:
PostgreSQL is quite picky on when to use a 'double quote' and when to use a 'single quote'. Typically, when providing a string, you would use a single quote.
This is similar to other answers in syntax, but it should be known that you can also pass the MD5 hash value of the password, so you are not transmitting a plain text password.
Here are a few scenarios of unintended consequences of altering a users password in plain text.
If you do not have SSL and are modifying remotely you are transmitting the plain text password across the network.
If you have your logging configuration set to log DDL statements log_statement = ddl or higher, then your plain text password will show up in your error logs.
If you are not protecting these logs, it’s a problem.
If you collect these logs/ETL them and display them where others have access, they could end up seeing this password, etc.
If you allow a user to manage their password, they are unknowingly revealing a password to an administrator or low-level employee tasked with reviewing logs.
With that said, here is how we can alter a user's password by building an MD5 hash value of the password.
PostgreSQL, when hashing a password as MD5, salts the password with the user name and then prepends the text "md5" to the resulting hash.
Example: "md5"+md5(password + username)
In Bash:
echo -n "passwordStringUserName" | md5sum | awk '{print "md5"$1}'
Output:
md5d6a35858d61d85e4a82ab1fb044aba9d
In PowerShell:
[PSCredential] $Credential = Get-Credential
$StringBuilder = New-Object System.Text.StringBuilder
$null = $StringBuilder.Append('md5');
[System.Security.Cryptography.HashAlgorithm]::Create('md5').ComputeHash([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(((ConvertFrom-SecureStringToPlainText -SecureString $Credential.Password) + $Credential.UserName))) | ForEach-Object {
$null = $StringBuilder.Append($_.ToString("x2"))
}
$StringBuilder.ToString();
## OUTPUT
md5d6a35858d61d85e4a82ab1fb044aba9d
So finally our ALTER USER command will look like
ALTER USER UserName WITH PASSWORD 'md5d6a35858d61d85e4a82ab1fb044aba9d';
Relevant links (note I will only link to the latest versions of the documentation. For older, it changes some, but MD5 is still supported a ways back.)
create role
The password is always stored encrypted in the system catalogs. The ENCRYPTED keyword has no effect, but is accepted for backwards compatibility. The method of encryption is determined by the configuration parameter password_encryption. If the presented password string is already in MD5-encrypted or SCRAM-encrypted format, then it is stored as-is regardless of password_encryption (since the system cannot decrypt the specified encrypted password string, to encrypt it in a different format). This allows reloading of encrypted passwords during dump/restore.
Configuration setting for password_encryption
PostgreSQL password authentication documentation
Building PostgreSQL password MD5 hash value
And the fully automated way with Bash and expect (in this example we provision a new PostgreSQL administrator with the newly provisioned PostgreSQL password both on OS and PostgreSQL run-time level):
# The $postgres_usr_pw and the other Bash variables MUST be defined
# for reference the manual way of doing things automated with expect bellow
#echo "copy-paste: $postgres_usr_pw"
#sudo -u postgres psql -c "\password"
# The OS password could / should be different
sudo -u root echo "postgres:$postgres_usr_pw" | sudo chpasswd
expect <<- EOF_EXPECT
set timeout -1
spawn sudo -u postgres psql -c "\\\password"
expect "Enter new password: "
send -- "$postgres_usr_pw\r"
expect "Enter it again: "
send -- "$postgres_usr_pw\r"
expect eof
EOF_EXPECT
cd /tmp/
# At this point the 'postgres' executable uses the new password
sudo -u postgres PGPASSWORD=$postgres_usr_pw psql \
--port $postgres_db_port --host $postgres_db_host -c "
DO \$\$DECLARE r record;
BEGIN
IF NOT EXISTS (
SELECT
FROM pg_catalog.pg_roles
WHERE rolname = '"$postgres_db_useradmin"') THEN
CREATE ROLE "$postgres_db_useradmin" WITH SUPERUSER CREATEROLE
CREATEDB REPLICATION BYPASSRLS
PASSWORD '"$postgres_db_useradmin_pw"' LOGIN ;
END IF;
END\$\$;
ALTER ROLE "$postgres_db_useradmin" WITH SUPERUSER CREATEROLE
CREATEDB REPLICATION BYPASSRLS
PASSWORD '"$postgres_db_useradmin_pw"' LOGIN ;
"
Change password to "postgres" for user "postgres":
# ALTER USER postgres WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD '<NEW-PASSWORD>';
I was on Windows (Windows Server 2019; PostgreSQL 10), so local type connections (pg_hba.conf: local all all peer) are not supported.
The following should work on Windows and Unix systems alike:
backup pg_hba.conf to pg_hba.orig.conf e.g.
create pg_hba.conf with only this: host all all 127.0.0.1/32 trust
restart pg (service)
execute psql -U postgres -h 127.0.0.1
enter (in pgctl console) alter user postgres with password 'SomePass';
restore pg_hba.conf from 1. above
Check file pg_hba.conf.
In case the authentication method is 'peer', the client's operating system user name/password must match the database user name and password. In that case, set the password for Linux user 'postgres' and the DB user 'postgres' to be the same.
See the documentation for details: 19.1. The pg_hba.conf File
In general, just use the pgAdmin UI for doing database-related activity.
If instead you are focusing more in automating database setup for your local development, CI, etc.
For example, you can use a simple combination like this.
(a) Create a dummy super user via Jenkins with a command similar to this:
docker exec -t postgres11-instance1 createuser --username=postgres --superuser experiment001
This will create a super user called experiment001 in you PostgreSQL database.
(b) Give this user some password by running a NON-Interactive SQL command.
docker exec -t postgres11-instance1 psql -U experiment001 -d postgres -c "ALTER USER experiment001 WITH PASSWORD 'experiment001' "
PostgreSQL is probably the best database out there for command line (non-interactive) tooling. Creating users, running SQL, making backup of database, etc.
In general, it is all quite basic with PostgreSQL, and it is overall quite trivial to integrate this into your development setup scripts or into automated CI configuration.
Using pgAdmin 4:
Menu Object → Change password...
Most of the answers were mostly correct, but you need to look out for minor things. The problem I had was that I didn't ever set the password of "postgres", so I couldn't log into an SQL command line that allowed me to change passwords. These are the steps that I used successfully (note that most or all commands need sudo or root user):
Edit the pg_hba.conf file in the data directory of the DB cluster you're trying to connect to.
The folder of the data directory can be found by inspecting the systemd command line, easily obtained with systemctl status postgresql#VERSION-DB_CLUSTER. Replace VERSION with your psql version and DB_CLUSTER with the name of your database cluster. This may be main if it was automatically created, so, e.g., postgresql#13-main. Alternatively, my Bash shell provided auto-complete after entering postgresql#, so you could try that or look for the PostgreSQL services in the list of all services (systemctl -a). Once you have the status output, look for the second command line after CGroup, which should be rather long, and start with /usr/lib/postgresql/13/bin/postgres or similar (depending on version, distro, and installation method). You are looking for the directory after -D, for example /var/lib/postgresql/13/main.
Add the following line: host all all 127.0.0.1/32 trust. This allows for all users on all databases to connect to the database via IPv4 on the local machine unconditionally, without asking for a password.
This is a temporary fix and don't forget to remove this line again later on. Just to be sure, I commented out the host all all 127.0.0.1/32 md5 (md5 may be replaced by scram-sha-256), which is valid for the same login data, just requiring a password.
Restart the database service: systemctl restart postgresql#... Again, use the exact service you found earlier.
Check that the service started properly with systemctl status postgresql#....
Connect with psql, and very importantly, force psql to not ask for a password. In my experience, it will ask you for a password even though the server doesn't care, and will still reject your login if your password was wrong. This can be accomplished with the -w flag.
The full command line looks something like this: sudo -u postgres psql -w -h 127.0.0.1 -p 5432. Here, postgres is your user and you may have changed that. 5432 is the port of the cluster-specific server and may be higher if you are running more than one cluster (I have 5434 for example).
Change the password with the \password special command.
Remember to remove the password ignore workaround and restart the server to apply the configuration.
I have a fresh ubuntu 10.10 install with all updates and postgresql 8.4
In order for postgresql to accept login+password connections i have configured it via:
sudo su postgres
psql
ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'password';
CREATE DATABASE myapp;
\q
exit
sudo vi /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf
change "local all all indent" to "local all all trust"
But, surprisingly, this is not working! The command
psql -U postgres password
Evaluates with error:
psql: FATAL: Ident authentication failed for user "postgres"
Any hints how i can make the psql -U to work?
It is probably a good idea to leave the "postgres" user with ident authentication. By default I believe Ubuntu uses the "postgres" user to perform upgrades, backups, etc, and that requires that it is able to login without a specified password.
I recommend creating another user (probably with your own username) and giving it admin privileges as well. Then you can use that user with passwords on local connections.
Here is what the relevant parts of my pg_hba.conf look like:
# allow postgres user to use "ident" authentication on Unix sockets
# (as per recent comments, omit "sameuser" if on postgres 8.4 or later)
local all postgres ident sameuser
# allow all other users to use "md5" authentication on Unix sockets
local all all md5
# for users connected via local IPv4 or IPv6 connections, always require md5
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 md5
host all all ::1/128 md5
Also note that psql -U postgres password will not do what you want. The password should never be specified on the commandline. That will try to login as user "postgres" to a database named "password".
You should use psql -U postgres myapp instead. Postgres will automatically prompt you for a password, if it is configured properly to require one.
In case we want the password be filled-in automatically, place it in $HOME/.pgpass file
I think your pg_ident.conf file is misconfigured. Also, have you tried
psql -U postgres -W
Another thing that can cause this is expired credentials. I don't think this happened in version 8, but in version 9 when you create a new role in pgadmin, it is created in an expired state and you need to change or clear the role's expiration date before you will be able to login with it.
You may find it helpful to create the database's user and schema in PostgreSQL:
Log into PostgreSQL from the postgres user
$ sudo -u postgres psql postgres
Once in, create the user and database
CREATE ROLE myuser LOGIN PASSWORD 'mypass';
CREATE DATABASE mydatabase WITH OWNER = myuser;
Log into PostgreSQL from the new user account
$ psql -h localhost -d mydatabase -U myuser -p <port>