How can I call psql so that it doesn't prompt for a password?
This is what I have:
psql -Umyuser < myscript.sql
However, I couldn't find the argument that passes the password, and so psql always prompts for it.
This question is related to
postgresql
psql
There are several ways to authenticate to PostgreSQL. You may wish to investigate alternatives to password authentication at https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/client-authentication.html.
To answer your question, there are a few ways provide a password for password-based authentication. The obvious way is via the password prompt. Instead of that, you can provide the password in a pgpass file or through the PGPASSWORD
environment variable. See these:
There is no option to provide the password as a command line argument because that information is often available to all users, and therefore insecure. However, in Linux/Unix environments you can provide an environment variable for a single command like this:
PGPASSWORD=yourpass psql ...
This also works for other postgresql clis for example you can run pgbench in non-interactive mode.
export PGPASSWORD=yourpassword
/usr/pgsql-9.5/bin/pgbench -h $REMOTE_PG_HOST -p 5432 -U postgres -c 12 -j 4 -t 10000 example > pgbench.out 2>&1 &
PGPASSWORD=[your password] psql -Umyuser < myscript.sql
8 years later...
On my mac, I had to put a line into the file
~/.pgpass
like:
<IP>:<PORT>:<dbname>:<user>:<password>
Also see:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-pgpass.html
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Pgpass
You can add this command line at the begining of your script:
set PGPASSWORD=[your password]
Building on mightybyte's answer for those who aren't comfortable with *nix shell scripting, here's a working script:
#!/bin/sh
PGPASSFILE=/tmp/pgpasswd$$
touch $PGPASSFILE
chmod 600 $PGPASSFILE
echo "myserver:5432:mydb:jdoe:password" > $PGPASSFILE
export PGPASSFILE
psql mydb
rm $PGPASSFILE
The double dollar sign ($$
) in /tmp/pgpasswd$$
at line 2 appends the process ID number to the file name, so that this script can be run more than once, even simultaneously, without side effects.
Note the use of the chmod
command at line 4 - just like the "not a plain file" error that mightybyte described, there's also a "permissions" error if this is not done.
At line 7, you won't have to use the -h
myserver, the -p
myport, or -U
jdoe flag if you use the defaults (localhost : 5432) and only have one database user. For multiple users, (but the default connection) change that line to
psql mydb jdoe
Don't forget to make the script executable with
chmod +x runpsql
(or whatever you called the script file)
UPDATE:
I took RichVel's advice and made the file unreadable before putting the password into it. That closes a slight security hole. Thanks!
Given the security concerns about using the PGPASSWORD environment variable, I think the best overall solution is as follows:
There are a couple points of note here. Step 1 is there to avoid mucking with the user's ~/.pgpass file that might exist. You also must make sure that the file has permissions 0600 or less.
Some have suggested leveraging bash to shortcut this as follows:
PGPASSFILE=<(echo myserver:5432:mydb:jdoe:password) psql -h myserver -U jdoe -p 5432 mydb
This uses the <() syntax to avoid needing to write the data to an actual file. But it doesn't work because psql checks what file is being used and will throw an error like this:
WARNING: password file "/dev/fd/63" is not a plain file
You have to create a password file: see http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/libpq-pgpass.html for more info.
This might be an old question, but there's an alternate method you can use that no one has mentioned. It's possible to specify the password directly in the connection URI. The documentation can be found here, alternatively here.
You can provide your username and password directly in the connection URI provided to psql
:
# postgresql://[user[:password]@][netloc][:port][/dbname][?param1=value1&...]
psql postgresql://username:password@localhost:5432/mydb
An alternative to using PGPASSWORD
environment variable is to use conninfo
string according to the documentation
An alternative way to specify connection parameters is in a conninfo string or a URI, which is used instead of a database name. This mechanism give you very wide control over the connection.
$ psql "host=<server> port=5432 dbname=<db> user=<user> password=<password>"
postgres=>
Use -w in the command: psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U user -w
You may find this useful: Windows PSQL command line: is there a way to allow for passwordless login?
It can be done simply using PGPASSWORD. I am using psql 9.5.10. In your case the solution would be
PGPASSWORD=password psql -U myuser < myscript.sql
I find, that psql show password prompt even you define PGPASSWORD variable, but you can specify -w option for psql to omit password prompt.
If you intend on having multiple hosts/database connections, the ~/.pgpass file is the way to go.
Steps:
vim ~/.pgpass
or similar. Input your information in the following format:
hostname:port:database:username:password
Do not add string quotes around your field values. You can also use * as a wildcard for your port/database fields.chmod 0600 ~/.pgpass
in order for it to not be silently ignored by psql.alias postygresy='psql --host hostname database_name -U username'
The values should match those that you inputted to the ~/.pgpass file.. ~/.bashrc
or similar. Note that if you have an export PGPASSWORD='' variable set, it will take precedence over the file.
If you're having problems on windows like me (I'm using Windows 7 64-bit) and set PGPASSWORD=[Password]
did not work.
Then, as Kavaklioglu said in one of the comments,
export PGPASSWORD=[password]
You will need to save this at the top of the file, or before any usage so its set before being called.
Certainly does work on windows :)
Source: Stackoverflow.com