To be clear about the 2 passwords involved with Postgres on your Mac:
• The installer asks for your usual Mac admin account password, to get permission for 2 operations: (1) to install stuff on your computer and (2) to create a special Unix user account named (by default) 'postgres'.
The actual disk files that make up your databases, the files containing your data, are stored in a folder owned by that 'postgres' user rather than your normal Mac user account. The reason is security: If your usual user account is compromised, at least your data files remain behind the wall of that other user.
• The installer prompts you to create a password for that 'postgres' user.
Just to be clear here, the password is not for the OS user 'postgres' but database superuser 'postgres'.
Make it a good password (long, use digits etc. to avoid being simply dictionary words).
When you run the 'pgAdmin' app, it will prompt you for that 'postgres' password to connect to the database server as that 'postgres' user.
--Basil Bourque
On Feb 13, 2011, at 10:46, Sachin Srivastava wrote:
The postgres account created on your OS is locked account (without any password) for security reasons. The password asked during installation is your database superuser password (used to connect to database).
Thus on your MAC you can login to postgres account as "sudo su postgres".
On Feb 13, 2011, at 11:27 PM, Maximilian Tyrtania wrote:
Just upgraded my 8.4.2 installation to 9.0.3 on Mac OS 10.6 using the Enterprise one-click installer. Everything went smoothly, except:
The installer asked me for the postgres password, but PG wouldn't accept it later on. I'm pretty sure i didn't mistype it. Have seen this a number of times on different machines. Had to change the password via the passwd utility. Anyone else seen this?
