Re: Authentication against /etc/passwd?

<Adrian(dot)Jackson(at)ioshq(dot)com> writes:
> Is there any way to authenticate users against the /etc/passwd (or
> /etc/shadow) file rather than the pg_shadow table? Is there any good
> reason for *not* wanting to do this

Postgres users are not the same as Unix users --- there's no
particularly good reason to assume that remote users of your
database will have accounts on the server machine. (In fact,
I'd say it's a more secure setup if they *don't*.)

There's also the small point that on well-secured systems, the
real passwords aren't in /etc/passwd at all, and the postmaster
certainly should not have privileges to read /etc/shadow.

If you insist on doing this (and you keep passwords in /etc/passwd),
I believe it would work to set up password auth with a flat password
file that's just a symlink to /etc/passwd. The format is deliberately
chosen to be compatible...

regards, tom lane