Supported Versions: Current (16) / 15 / 14 / 13 / 12
Development Versions: devel
Unsupported versions: 11 / 10 / 9.6 / 9.5 / 9.4 / 9.3 / 9.2 / 9.1 / 9.0 / 8.4 / 8.3 / 8.2 / 8.1
This documentation is for an unsupported version of PostgreSQL.
You may want to view the same page for the current version, or one of the other supported versions listed above instead.

42.8. pg_authid

The catalog pg_authid contains information about database authorization identifiers (roles). A role subsumes the concepts of "users" and "groups". A user is essentially just a role with the rolcanlogin flag set. Any role (with or without rolcanlogin) may have other roles as members; see pg_auth_members.

Since this catalog contains passwords, it must not be publicly readable. pg_roles is a publicly readable view on pg_authid that blanks out the password field.

Chapter 18 contains detailed information about user and privilege management.

Because user identities are cluster-wide, pg_authid is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_authid per cluster, not one per database.

Table 42-8. pg_authid Columns

Name Type References Description
rolname name   Role name
rolsuper bool   Role has superuser privileges
rolinherit bool   Role automatically inherits privileges of roles it is a member of
rolcreaterole bool   Role may create more roles
rolcreatedb bool   Role may create databases
rolcatupdate bool   Role may update system catalogs directly. (Even a superuser may not do this unless this column is true.)
rolcanlogin bool   Role may log in, that is, this role can be given as the initial session authorization identifier.
rolconnlimit int4   For roles that can log in, this sets maximum number of concurrent connections this role can make. -1 means no limit.
rolpassword text   Password (possibly encrypted); NULL if none
rolvaliduntil timestamptz   Password expiry time (only used for password authentication); NULL if no expiration
rolconfig text[]   Session defaults for run-time configuration variables