Doc bug: Postgres account not available

Doc bug: Postgres account not available

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Hi!

Apparently our Postgres service changed a little bit recently.  While it
was easy to setup in the past, this week it cost me a few hours, trying
to figure out how to do a simple thing like

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ psql -U postgres
psql: FATAL:  Peer authentication failed for user "postgres"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Eventually, I discovered https://issues.guix.info/38198.
Turns out the authentication policy is now "peer" and the shell-less
'postgres' user cannot be used without a shell.

As such, to administrate PostgresQL we need first to switch to the
postgres user as follows:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
  sudo su postgres -s psql
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

This was not a very obvious find on the Internet.
Can we make this easier?  The above thread suggests to leave the setup
as is and to document it.

Thoughts?  Gábor, Giovanni?

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: Doc bug: Postgres account not available

[Gábor Boskovits]

Hello Pierre,

This has been this way for a while. It took me some time to  find it
out also. I guess that documenting it would be fine.
Most of the times I finally end up adding a shell to the account, but
keeping it this way is a sane default when you automanage your
database.

Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> ezt írta (időpont: 2020. máj.
23., Szo, 16:47):
>
> Hi!
>
> Apparently our Postgres service changed a little bit recently.  While it
> was easy to setup in the past, this week it cost me a few hours, trying
> to figure out how to do a simple thing like
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
> $ psql -U postgres
> psql: FATAL:  Peer authentication failed for user "postgres"
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> Eventually, I discovered https://issues.guix.info/38198.
> Turns out the authentication policy is now "peer" and the shell-less
> 'postgres' user cannot be used without a shell.
>
> As such, to administrate PostgresQL we need first to switch to the
> postgres user as follows:
>
> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>   sudo su postgres -s psql
> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
>
> This was not a very obvious find on the Internet.
> Can we make this easier?  The above thread suggests to leave the setup
> as is and to document it.
>
> Thoughts?  Gábor, Giovanni?
>
> --
> Pierre Neidhardt
> https://ambrevar.xyz/


Best regards,
g_bor
-- 
OpenPGP Key Fingerprint: 7988:3B9F:7D6A:4DBF:3719:0367:2506:A96C:CF63:0B21

Re: Doc bug: Postgres account not available

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Doc update patch sent here: https://issues.guix.info/issue/41786.

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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