Does the initial postgres user have a password?

dandl wrote:

I have a new 9.5 installation, Windows x64, developer only. No users have been added, and no passwords
set.

I can access the system:
· using pgAdmin3, without specifying a user or password
· using psql, specifying user ‘postgres’ but no password

I cannot access the system with various other tools that require a connection string eg
password authentication failed for user "postgres"

There is a ‘postgres’ user defined in pg_shadow with password of :
"md5a19959576d12fc69375fc3dadaeab90b"

What is going on here? Is there a password for user ‘postgres’ or isn’t there? What is it? Why don’t I
need it sometimes, and I do other times?

You have a password set, and it is probably in a password file, which
might have been created by pgAdmin III.

See http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/libpq-pgpass.html

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

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Other tools may try to connect with different users or with same users but
using ip (not local host) and pg_hba.conf file may not allow paswordless
login except localhost.Reseting postgres password with alter user, and
configuring pg_hba.conf file can solve your problem.

Regards,
Ugur

2016-05-03 15:03 GMT+03:00 Albe Laurenz <laurenz.albe@wien.gv.at>:

From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org [mailto:pgsql-general-
owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Albe Laurenz

What is going on here? Is there a password for user ‘postgres’ or
isn’t there? What is it? Why don’t I need it sometimes, and I do other

times?

You have a password set, and it is probably in a password file, which might
have been created by pgAdmin III.

Half right.

See http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/libpq-pgpass.html

Mostly right. Thanks -- another part of the docs I've never found before.

Turns out that the superuser account does indeed have a password (how else would I have got past that annoying prompt during installation?) and the installer created a file in one of the strange Windows user data folders (not exactly the one listed in the docs, but close). Both pgadmin and psql know how to find that file, but other tools don't. Hence the inconsistency.

Editing the pg_hba.conf (the usual recommendation) was never the right thing to do here. Finding that little password file was the trick.

Regards
David M Bennett FACS

Andl - A New Database Language - andl.org

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