Re: Authentication to run pg_dump automatically

On Wed, 2003-02-19 at 19:36, Robert Fitzpatrick wrote:
> I would like to write a script to dump all the databases each night. The
> only way I have figured out it can be done is to trust the 'postgres'
> user in pg_hba.conf for local connections and run pg_dump with that user
> in the script (is this safer than PGPASSWORD).

> This is for a PostgreSQL v7.1 database, so I can't use .pgpass and I
> don't want to use the environment variable PGPASSWORD.

I believe PGPASSWORD may be secure on some platforms (I can't recall the
security implications at the moment, but you might want to investigate
it).

Modern versions of pg_dump also have a '--use-set-session-authorization'
that might be helpful -- see the 7.3 reference page for pg_dump for more
info.

Also, consider upgrading: 7.1 is quite old.

Cheers,

Neil
--
Neil Conway <neilc(at)samurai(dot)com> || PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC