"Joel Burton" <joel@joelburton.com> writes:
> PG server doesn't require a password to start up. How are you starting it up
> so that it requires a password?
The server does not care --- but pg_ctl tries to connect (via psql) in
order to see if the server is up yet. If you want to use password-based
authentication and not supply a password for "pg_ctl start", then you'll
need to specify the don't-wait-for-startup option to pg_ctl.
But my opinion is that password auth is a serious PITA; you are going to
have lots of trouble with backup scripts, not only startup, if you try
to run your installation like that. For local connections you should
consider whether you can't use ident authentication instead (assuming
you have a platform on which we support ident for Unix-socket
connections).
regards, tom lane