Re: createuser: How to specify a database to connect to

On 03/13/2017 08:44 AM, Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
> 2017-03-13 16:29 GMT+01:00 Schmid Andreas <Andreas(dot)Schmid(at)bd(dot)so(dot)ch
> <mailto:Andreas(dot)Schmid(at)bd(dot)so(dot)ch>>:
>
> Hi
>
> I'm trying to add a new DB user with the following command from my
> client machine:
> createuser -h my.host.name <http://my.host.name> -U mysuperusername
> --pwprompt newusername
>
> I'm getting the following message:
> createuser: could not connect to database postgres: FATAL: no
> pg_hba.conf entry for host "10.0.0.1", user "mysuperusername",
> database "postgres", SSL on
>
> Now, it's true that our pg_hba.conf doesn't allow access to the
> postgres database. We did this intentionally, as usually no one
> needs to connect to this database.
>
> So I tried to do
> export PGDATABASE=sogis
> before the createuser command. But no success. Does anyone know of
> another way to achieve what I'm trying?
>
> I whish to do it with createuser rather than with the SQL command
> CREATE USER because this way I can avoid the password for the new
> user to show up anywhere in the history.
>
> I'm on 9.2 on Ubuntu 14.04.
>
>
> You can't. The createuser.c code specifically targets the "postgres"
> database, which surprises me. Anyway, the only other way to do it is to
> use psql, something like: psql -c "CREATE USER..." -h ... your_database

Unfortunately that stills leaves the password in the Postgres log which
is what the OP is trying to avoid. The immediate solution would be to
open the postgres database in pg_hba.conf. A longer term solution would
be to file an issue and see if the code can be changed to allow
specifying a database to createuser.

>
>
> --
> Guillaume.
> http://blog.guillaume.lelarge.info
> http://www.dalibo.com

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian(dot)klaver(at)aklaver(dot)com