[Dspace-general] Dspace-general Digest, Vol 63, Issue 22

[Mark H. Wood]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 01:47:29AM +0530, Shashank Sahni wrote:
> >   createuser -h localhost -U postgres -d -A -P dspace
> >
> > This form of the command will use a TCP socket rather than a Unix
> > socket, and thus matches a different rule which will allow you to
> > authenticate by password.
> >
> 
> You sir have asked to execute the above command in order to get my job
> done..but for it i need to know the password for postgres..
> I don't even remember when was this account created..that is why i don't
> have its password..Does anyone know from where can I retrieve its
> password..Please help..!!

There are two different authentication domains involved, and it's
important to make clear which we are talking about at any particular
time.

There is probably an OS account named "postgres".  If you don't have
the password to that account, then the root account can set a new one
that you know.  OS account passwords are stored as hashes, and are not
recoverable, but they can be reset.  Once you are able to login to the
OS account "postgres", the "ident" authenticator should accept you as
the database user "postgres" when you are logged in as the OS account
"postgres".

There is probably also a database account named "postgres".  It is the
database superuser account.  If that password is lost, I think you
will have to destroy the database cluster and recreate it from
backups, being careful NOT to restore the "postgres" account as that
would replace the new, known password with the old, unknown one.  If
you have another database account which has the superuser privilege,
then you could use that account to reset the password on "postgres".
Postgres database account passwords may or may not be stored as
hashes, and thus may or may not be recoverable.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood at IUPUI.Edu
Typically when a software vendor says that a product is "intuitive" he
means the exact opposite.

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