Re: resetting superuser password

"Andrew C. Uselton" <acuselton(at)lbl(dot)gov> writes:
> We do not know the superuser (postgres) password to our database
> cluster. The auth configuration (pg_hba.conf) has the only auth method
> set to:

> Type db user method param
> local all all md5 sameuser

> I have root access to the machine, but I don't see how to reset the
> superuser password. The thing I tried was to briefly replace the above
> auth configuration with

> local all all trust

> and then reset the password (after the required SIGHUP). The password
> update apparently succeeded, but when I put the md5 auth method back in
> place I still did not have access.

At that level of detail, it should have worked, so you are omitting
something important. Please show exactly what you did, what messages
you got, etc.

One point is that AFAIR, md5 auth method doesn't take a parameter,
so that "sameuser" is at best noise and might be treated as a syntax
error. Do the failures you get suggest anything about incorrect
pg_hba.conf file?

regards, tom lane