Thread: resetting superuser password

Howdy all,
  We do not know the superuser (postgres) password to our database
cluster.  The auth configuration (pg_hba.conf) has the only auth method
set to:

Type    db    user    method    param
local   all      all      md5         sameuser

I have root access to the machine, but I don't see how to reset the
superuser password. The thing I tried was to briefly replace the above
auth configuration with

local   all      all      trust

and then reset the password (after the required SIGHUP).  The password
update apparently succeeded, but when I put the md5 auth method back in
place I still did not have access.  I conclude that "regular" and md5
passwords are not stored in the same place or in the same way, which
isn't all that surprising.   Any tricks you can send my way would be
most helpful.
Cheers,
Andrew

"Andrew C. Uselton" <acuselton@lbl.gov> writes:
>   We do not know the superuser (postgres) password to our database
> cluster.  The auth configuration (pg_hba.conf) has the only auth method
> set to:

> Type    db    user    method    param
> local   all      all      md5         sameuser

> I have root access to the machine, but I don't see how to reset the
> superuser password. The thing I tried was to briefly replace the above
> auth configuration with

> local   all      all      trust

> and then reset the password (after the required SIGHUP).  The password
> update apparently succeeded, but when I put the md5 auth method back in
> place I still did not have access.

At that level of detail, it should have worked, so you are omitting
something important.  Please show exactly what you did, what messages
you got, etc.

One point is that AFAIR, md5 auth method doesn't take a parameter,
so that "sameuser" is at best noise and might be treated as a syntax
error.  Do the failures you get suggest anything about incorrect
pg_hba.conf file?

            regards, tom lane