Re: Questions from a Newbie

--- John Gardner <john(dot)gardner(at)tagish(dot)co(dot)uk> wrote:
> 1) listen_addresses in postgresql.sql - The documentation states that;
>
> "...The value takes the form of a comma-separated list of host names
> and/or numeric IP addresses. The special entry * corresponds to all
> available IP interfaces. If the list is empty, the server does not
> listen on any IP interface at all, in which case only Unix-domain
> sockets can be used to connect to it. The default value is localhost,
> which allows only local "loopback" connections to be made. This
> parameter can only be set at server start."

I am not really sure about the full used of the listen_addresses variable in the postgresql.conf
file. I just leave it as *. The pg_hba.conf file is what I use to specify the security that I
want. It gives you the ability to specify exactly who can connect and how the connections will be
authenticated.

this link describes the conf file and its use:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/interactive/auth-pg-hba-conf.html

> 2) How do you set the default 'postgres' Login Role to have a password?
> I did what I thought was the correct way in PgAdmin to assign it a
> password, and resultant code in the SQL pane does seem like it has an
> MD5 password assigned to it, but our security scanning software still
> assures me that, "Your PostgreSQL database is not password protected.
> We could log in as the user 'postgres'."
>

The ability to log into as user postgres is also dictated by the setting in the pg_hba.conf. If
you change the settings, you will probably get the effect that you want.

Regards,
Richard Broersma Jr.