I either forgot or mistyped (during the installation) the password to the default user of PostgreSQL. I can't seem to be able to run it, and I get the following error:
psql: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "hisham"
hisham-agil: hisham$ psql
Is there a way to reset the password or how do I create a new user with superuser privileges?
I am new to PostgreSQL and just installed it for the first time. I am trying to use it with Ruby on Rails and I am running Mac OS X v10.7 (Lion).
Find the file pg_hba.conf. It may be located, for example, in /etc/postgresql-9.1/pg_hba.conf.
cd /etc/postgresql-9.1/
Back it up
cp pg_hba.conf pg_hba.conf-backup
Place the following line (as either the first uncommented line, or as the only one):
For all occurrence of below (local and host) , except replication section if you don't have any it has to be changed as follow ,no MD5 or Peer authentication should be present.
local all all trust
Restart your PostgreSQL server (e.g., on Linux:)
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
If the service (daemon) doesn't start reporting in log file:
local connections are not supported by this build
you should change
local all all trust
to
host all all 127.0.0.1/32 trust
You can now connect as any user. Connect as the superuser postgres (note, the superuser name may be different in your installation. In some systems it is called pgsql, for example.)
psql -U postgres
or
psql -h 127.0.0.1 -U postgres
(note that with the first command you will not always be connected with local host)
Reset the password ('replace my_user_name with postgres since you are resetting the postgres user)
ALTER USER my_user_name with password 'my_secure_password';
Restore the old pg_hba.conf file as it is very dangerous to keep around
cp pg_hba.conf-backup pg_hba.conf
Restart the server, in order to run with the safe pg_hba.conf file
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
Further reading about that pg_hba file: 19.1. The pg_hba.conf File (official documentation)