Re: [GENERAL] How do I activate and change the postgres user's password?

Lincoln Yeoh wrote:
>Right now any user on the local machine can log on as postgres to the
>template1 database. I don't like that, so I wish to turn on password
>checking.
>
>OK so I edit pg_hba.conf and put:
>
>local all password
>host all 127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 password
>
>Then I have problems logging in as ANY user. Couldn't figure out what the
>default password for the postgres user was. Only after some messing around
>I found that I could log on as the postgres user with the password \N. Not
>obvious, at least to me.
>
>I only guessed it after looking at the pg_pwd file and noticing a \N there.
>Is this where the passwords are stored? By the way should they be stored in
>the clear and in a 666 permissions file? How about hashing them with some
>salt?

The PGDATA directory should have permission rwx------, so that no one can
descend into it to look at pg_pwd; therefore the file's own permissions are
unimportant.

>Now the next problem is: How do I change the postgres user password?

ALTER USER will change passwords held in pg_shadow, including that of the
postgres user, but will not, I think, change those set by pg_passwd.

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