It is not psql but libpq which uses .pgpass file, as per my knowledge there is no way of preventing it unless you have your own customize version of libpq which do not have such option in it. But there is a workaround to prevent libpg from using default .pgpass file is to set 'PGPASSFILE' environment variable to something like '/dev/null'.
I am executing many "COPY" commands via psql serially from a bash script from a compute node that accesses a mounted home directory located on a remote server. After about a thousand or so executions of the "COPY" command I get the error "psql: could not get home directory to locate password file". for each subsequent attempt to connect to PostgreSQL using psql so as to issue the next "COPY" command.
I have configured pg_hba.conf to trust connections coming from the specific network which contains both the PostgreSQL server and the node which I am executing the psql commands from.
Is there a way to instruct psql not to try reading ~/.pgpass file?
Both server and client (psql) are PostgreSQL 10.0 built from source, the OS environment is Linux Centos 7.3.1611 (Core).