Postgresql – What exactly is the use of the column USER in a pg_hba.conf file

Since you want the backup user to connect locally from the database server. I assume the backup is running on a dedicated backup account on the OS.

Using pg_hba.conf you can specify like:

# TYPE  DATABASE USER   ADDRESS METHOD
local   all      backup_user    peer map=local_peers_backup_user

(method peer (with local/peer an address is not needed))

combine this with a pg_ident.conf like:

# MAPNAME                SYSTEM-USERNAME   PG-USERNAME
local_peers_backup_user  postgres          backup_user
local_peers_backup_user  OSBKPUSER         backup_user

This allows the os user postgres and OSBKUSER to connect to all databases in the cluster as the postgres database user named backup_user, using peer authentication. This works using sockets, on linux.

connected as your OSBKPUSER running psql suffices to get connected as backup_user, assuming that you already prepared the environment variables for the OSBKPUSER and OSBKPUSER has only 1 map. Otherwise run psql -U backup_user.

This connect method is secure, if you trust that the access to your dbserver is secured.

If you edit your pg_hba.conf to allow login as one of the other superusers, then you can login as one of those and then alter role postgres superuser.