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PostgreSQL 8.3.4 Documentation
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ALTER USER

Name

ALTER USER -- change a database role

Synopsis

ALTER USER name [ [ WITH ] option [ ... ] ]

where option can be:
    
      SUPERUSER | NOSUPERUSER
    | CREATEDB | NOCREATEDB
    | CREATEROLE | NOCREATEROLE
    | CREATEUSER | NOCREATEUSER
    | INHERIT | NOINHERIT
    | LOGIN | NOLOGIN
    | CONNECTION LIMIT connlimit
    | [ ENCRYPTED | UNENCRYPTED ] PASSWORD 'password'
    | VALID UNTIL 'timestamp' 

ALTER USER name RENAME TO newname

ALTER USER name SET configuration_parameter { TO | = } { value | DEFAULT }
ALTER USER name SET configuration_parameter FROM CURRENT
ALTER USER name RESET configuration_parameter
ALTER USER name RESET ALL

Description

ALTER USER is now an alias for ALTER ROLE.

Compatibility

The ALTER USER statement is a PostgreSQL extension. The SQL standard leaves the definition of users to the implementation.

User Comments

23 Aug 2008 1:01:39

to set a password

By default, PostgreSQL has a database called template1 containing privileges and other housekeeping data and an adminstrative user named postgres. Unless your system uses socket credentials, the postgres database user initially has no password. To assign it a password (or to override the password assigned by socket credentials), run a command like the following. This command assigns the postgres user the password newpassword.

psql -c "ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'newpassword'" -d template1

edit pg_hba.conf file

change
local all ident sameuser
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 ident sameuser
host all all ::1/128 ident sameuser

change to
local all password
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 password
host all all ::1/128 password

alternately, password can be md5

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