19.4. Trust Authentication #
When trust
authentication is specified, Postgres Pro assumes that anyone who can connect to the server is authorized to access the database with whatever database user name they specify (even superuser names). Of course, restrictions made in the database
and user
columns still apply. This method should only be used when there is adequate operating-system-level protection on connections to the server.
trust
authentication is appropriate and very convenient for local connections on a single-user workstation. It is usually not appropriate by itself on a multiuser machine. However, you might be able to use trust
even on a multiuser machine, if you restrict access to the server's Unix-domain socket file using file-system permissions. To do this, set the unix_socket_permissions
(and possibly unix_socket_group
) configuration parameters as described in Section 18.3. Or you could set the unix_socket_directories
configuration parameter to place the socket file in a suitably restricted directory.
Setting file-system permissions only helps for Unix-socket connections. Local TCP/IP connections are not restricted by file-system permissions. Therefore, if you want to use file-system permissions for local security, remove the host ... 127.0.0.1 ...
line from pg_hba.conf
, or change it to a non-trust
authentication method.
trust
authentication is only suitable for TCP/IP connections if you trust every user on every machine that is allowed to connect to the server by the pg_hba.conf
lines that specify trust
. It is seldom reasonable to use trust
for any TCP/IP connections other than those from localhost (127.0.0.1).