Received: from localhost (unknown [200.46.204.183]) by developer.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D4C812E0068 for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2008 17:43:43 -0300 (ADT) Received: from developer.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.71]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.183]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 80343-03-6 for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2008 17:43:29 -0300 (ADT) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from sss.pgh.pa.us (sss.pgh.pa.us [66.207.139.130]) by developer.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 920822E005A for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2008 17:42:30 -0300 (ADT) Received: from sss2.sss.pgh.pa.us (tgl@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sss.pgh.pa.us (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m54KgTNU029367; Wed, 4 Jun 2008 16:42:29 -0400 (EDT) To: Marc Fromm cc: "pgsql-admin@postgresql.org" Subject: Re: FATAL Authentication In-reply-to: References: Comments: In-reply-to Marc Fromm message dated "Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:29:09 -0700" Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:42:29 -0400 Message-ID: <29366.1212612149@sss.pgh.pa.us> From: Tom Lane X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Archive-Number: 200806/37 X-Sequence-Number: 29375 Marc Fromm writes: > I am trying to run commands from the shell (without becoming the postgres user first), which work fine on our live server, but on our dev server I receive FATAL authentication errors. > [root@dev tmp]$ createdb -U postgres lan_portal > createdb: could not connect to database postgres: FATAL: Ident authentication failed for user "postgres" The -U option is just about entirely useless under "ident sameuser" authentication, which apparently is what you are using. If you like ident auth in general, you can make it do what you want by setting up a map file that lets (eg) root become any of a list of postgres user names. Or you could switch to some other auth method. See http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/client-authentication.html regards, tom lane