Ubuntu – Postgres password authentication fails

13.10postgresql

I've installed PostgreSQL 9.1 and pgadmin3 on Ubuntu Server 13.10.

I configured postgresql.conf with: listen_addresses = '*'

also I configured ph_hba.conf by changed peer connections to md5

Plus I reset the password of postgres by: sudo password postgres

then restarted the service with sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart

after that I tried to connect to the default PostgreSQL template database:

sudo -u postgres psql template1

but login failed with this error message: 

psql: FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "postgres"

then I tried to login from the pgadmin, which gave me the same error.

I've read here that it might be a password expiry dates bug
PostgreSQL user can not connect to server after changing password

but I couldn't solve it coz I cannot login with psql. Does anyone now how to resolve this issue?

EDIT

ph_hba file:

here

Screenshot:

enter image description here

Best Answer

You are confusing the password for the unix user "postgres" with the database password for the database user "postgres". These are not the same.

You've locked yourself out, because you enabled md5 authentication for database user postgres without setting a password for the database user postgres.

Add a new line to the top of pg_hba.conf:

local    postgres     postgres     peer

then restart/reload PostgreSQL and:

sudo -u postgres psql

From the resulting prompt:

ALTER USER postgres PASSWORD 'my_postgres_password';

then remove the line you added to pg_hba.conf and restart Pg again. You can now use the password you set above to connect to PostgreSQL as the postgres user.

To learn more, read the "client authentication" chapter of the user manual and the docs on pg_hba.conf.

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