Re: How to revoke privileged from PostgreSQL's superuser

Thanks, I didn't realize that this was handled by a flag instead of just
the standard permissions.

On Mon, Aug 6, 2018 at 7:43 AM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Bear Giles <bgiles(at)coyotesong(dot)com> writes:
> > In postgresql the equivalent user is 'postgres'. Nobody should ever be
> > logged in as that user once you've created the initial user(s). What
> > postgresql calls a 'superuser' is just a user with a few permissions set
> by
> > default. It's easy to grant the same privileges to any user, or drop them
> > from someone created as a superuser.
>
> Well, more to the point, a superuser is somebody with the rolsuper bit
> set in their pg_authid entry. You can revoke the bootstrap superuser's
> superuserness if you have a mind to -- see ALTER USER. However, as
> everyone has pointed out already, this is a bad idea and you will end
> up undoing it. (Figuring out how to do that without a reinstall is left
> as penance for insisting on a bad idea. It is possible, and I think
> even documented.)
>
> However: a whole lot of what the bootstrap superuser can do is inherent
> in being the owner of all the built-in database objects, and that you
> cannot get rid of. Objects have to be owned by somebody.
>
> regards, tom lane
>