Thread: drop PW

I have created a new 8.3 version DB and populated it.  A specific user 
of this database (george) has been setup with a password, so that every 
time I use psql or some other utility, I need to supply this password.  
So I want to drop the password authentication.  I tried rerunning 
createuser (and just pressing Enter when prompted for the new password), 
but it complains that the user already exists.  I can't drop the user 
because this user owns the DB and all the tables.  My postgresql books 
are all for 7.x, and suggests altering the pg_shadow table (which seems 
risky to me).  I tried:
ALTER USER george PASSWORD '';
and that looked like it succeeded, but running psql again prompted me 
and when I just hit Enter, it complained that no password was supplied.

So how do I turn off being prompted for a password for george.  (I am 
aware of the security risks...)

Mark

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 04:51:20PM -0400, Mark Fenbers wrote:
> So how do I turn off being prompted for a password for george.  (I am
> aware of the security risks...)

Create a .pgpass file[1], or modify pg_hba.conf[2]

- Josh / eggyknap

[1] http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/libpq-pgpass.html
[2] http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/client-authentication.html

Mark,

As Joshua said, you can modify pg_hba.conf.  What's happening is 
PostgreSQL is configured to require a password for the IP address that 
user is connecting from, but you're not supplying one.  Set that user 
and the IP address they connect from to "trust" security in pg_hba.conf 
and bounce PostgreSQL.

An alternative approach is to add the required password to your user's 
.pgpass file however I've never used those so cannot comment.

Andy

Mark Fenbers wrote:
> I have created a new 8.3 version DB and populated it.  A specific user 
> of this database (george) has been setup with a password, so that 
> every time I use psql or some other utility, I need to supply this 
> password.  So I want to drop the password authentication.  I tried 
> rerunning createuser (and just pressing Enter when prompted for the 
> new password), but it complains that the user already exists.  I can't 
> drop the user because this user owns the DB and all the tables.  My 
> postgresql books are all for 7.x, and suggests altering the pg_shadow 
> table (which seems risky to me).  I tried:
> ALTER USER george PASSWORD '';
> and that looked like it succeeded, but running psql again prompted me 
> and when I just hit Enter, it complained that no password was supplied.
>
> So how do I turn off being prompted for a password for george.  (I am 
> aware of the security risks...)
>
> Mark
>