psql: FATAL: Peer authentication failed for user “dev”

Question

when i create a new user, but it cannot login the database.
I do that like this:

postgres@Aspire:/home/XXX$ createuser dev
Shall the new role be a superu         


        

Answer 1

When you specify:

psql -U user

it connects via UNIX Socket, which by default uses peer authentication, unless specified in pg_hba.conf otherwise.

You can specify:

host    database             user             127.0.0.1/32       md5
host    database             user             ::1/128            md5

to get TCP/IP connection on loopback interface (both IPv4 and IPv6) for specified database and user.

After changes you have to restart postgres or reload it's configuration. Restart that should work in modern RHEL/Debian based distros:

service postgresql restart

Reload should work in following way:

pg_ctl reload

but the command may differ depending of PATH configuration - you may have to specify absolute path, which may be different, depending on way the postgres was installed.

Then you can use:

psql -h localhost -U user -d database

to login with that user to specified database over TCP/IP. md5 stands for encrypted password, while you can also specify password for plain text passwords during authorisation. These 2 options shouldn't be of a great matter as long as database server is only locally accessible, with no network access.

Important note: Definition order in pg_hba.conf matters - rules are read from top to bottom, like iptables, so you probably want to add proposed rules above the rule:

host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            ident