Client Authenticationclient authentication
When a client application connects to the database server, it specifies which
Postgres user name it wants to connect as,
much the same way one logs into a Unix computer as a particular user.
Within the SQL environment the active
database user name determines access privileges to database
objects -- see for more information
about that. It is therefore obviously essential to restrict which
database user name(s) a given client can connect as.
Authentication is the process by which the
database server establishes the identity of the client, and by
extension determines whether the client application (or the user
who runs the client application) is permitted to connect with the
user name that was requested.
Postgres offers client authentication by
(client) host and by database, with a number of different
authentication methods available.
Postgres database user names are logically
separate from user names of the operating system in which the server
runs. If all the users of a particular server also have accounts on
the server's machine, it makes sense to assign database user names
that match their Unix user ids. However, a server that accepts remote
connections may have many users who have no local account, and in such
cases there need be no connection between database user names and Unix
user names.
The pg_hba.conf filepg_hba.conf
Client authentication is controlled by the file
pg_hba.conf in the data directory, e.g.,
/usr/local/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf. (HBA> stands
for host-based authentication.) A default pg_hba.conf
file is installed when the
data area is initialized by initdb.
The general format of the pg_hba.conf file is
of a set of records, one per line. Blank lines and lines beginning
with a hash character (#) are ignored. A record is
made up of a number of fields which are separated by spaces and/or
tabs. Records cannot be continued across lines.
A record may have one of the three formats
local databaseauthentication-method [ authentication-option ]
host databaseIP-addressIP-maskauthentication-method [ authentication-option ]
hostssl databaseIP-addressIP-maskauthentication-method [ authentication-option ]
The meaning of the fields is as follows:
local
This record pertains to connection attempts over Unix domain
sockets.
host
This record pertains to connection attempts over TCP/IP
networks. Note that TCP/IP connections are completely disabled
unless the server is started with the switch or
the equivalent configuration parameter is set.
hostssl
This record pertains to connection attempts with SSL over
TCP/IP. To make use of this option the server must be
built with SSL support enabled. Furthermore, SSL must be
enabled with the database
Specifies the database that this record applies to. The value
all specifies that it applies to all
databases, while the value sameuser> identifies the
database with the same name as the connecting user. Otherwise,
this is the name of a specific Postgres
database.
IP addressIP mask
These two fields control to which hosts a
host record applies, based on their IP
address. (Of course IP addresses can be spoofed but this
consideration is beyond the scope of
Postgres.) The precise logic is that
(actual-IP-address xor IP-address-field) and IP-mask-field
must be zero for the record to match.
authentication method
Specifies the method that users must use to authenticate themselves
when connecting to that database. The possible choices follow,
details are in .
trust>
The connection is allowed unconditionally. This method allows
any user that has login access to the client host to connect as
any Postgres user whatsoever.
reject>
The connection is rejected unconditionally. This is mostly
useful to filter out> certain hosts from a group.
password>
The client is required to supply a password with the connection
attempt which is required to match the password that was set up
for the user.
An optional file name may be specified after the
password keyword. This file is expected to
contain a list of users that this record pertains to, and
optionally alternative passwords.
The password is sent over the wire in clear text. For better
protection, use the md5 or
crypt methods.
md5>
Like the password method, but the password
is sent over the wire encrypted using a simple
challenge-response protocol. This protects against incidental
wire-sniffing. The name of a file may follow the
md5 keyword. It contains a list of users
for this record.
crypt>
Like the md5 method but uses older crypt
authentication for pre-7.2 clients. md5
is preferred, unless you need to support old clients that
do not have md5. The crypt>
method is not compatible with encrypting passwords in
pg_shadow>, and it has been observed to fail
when client and server machines have different implementations
of the crypt() library routine.
krb4>
Kerberos V4 is used to authenticate the user. This is only
available for TCP/IP connections.
krb5>
Kerberos V5 is used to authenticate the user. This is only
available for TCP/IP connections.
ident>
The identity of the user as determined on login to the
operating system is used by Postgres
to determine whether the user
is allowed to connect as the requested database user.
For TCP/IP connections the user's identity is determined by
contacting the ident server on the client
host. (Note that this is only as reliable as the remote ident
server; ident authentication should never be used for remote hosts
whose administrators are not trustworthy.)
On operating systems
supporting SO_PEERCRED> requests for Unix domain sockets,
ident authentication is possible for local connections;
the system is then asked for the connecting user's identity.
On systems without SO_PEERCRED> requests, ident authentication
is only available for TCP/IP connections. As a workaround,
it is possible to
specify the localhost> address
127.0.0.1> and make connections
to this address.
The authentication option following
the ident> keyword specifies the name of an
ident map that specifies which operating
system users equate with which database users. See below for
details.
pam>
This authentication type operates similarly to
password, with the main difference that
it will use PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) as the
authentication mechanism. The authentication
option following the pam> keyword
specifies the service name that will be passed to PAM. The
default service name is postgresql.
For more information about PAM, please read the Linux-PAM
Page and/or the Solaris> PAM
Page.
authentication option
This field is interpreted differently depending on the
authentication method, as described there.
The first record that matches the client IP address and requested
database name of a connection attempt is used to do the
authentication step. There is no fall-through> or
backup>: if one record is chosen and the authentication
fails, the following records are not considered. If no record
matches, the access will be denied.
The pg_hba.conf file is loaded only on startup
and when the postmaster> receives a
SIGHUP signal. If you edit the file on an
active system, you will need to signal the postmaster>
(using pg_ctl reload> or kill -HUP>)
to make it re-read the file.
An example of a pg_hba.conf file is shown in
. See below for details on the
different authentication methods.
An example pg_hba.conf file
# TYPE DATABASE IP_ADDRESS MASK AUTHTYPE MAP
# Allow any user on the local system to connect to any
# database under any username, but only via an IP connection:
host all 127.0.0.1 255.255.255.255 trust
# The same, over Unix-socket connections:
local all trust
# Allow any user from any host with IP address 192.168.93.x to
# connect to database "template1" as the same username that ident on that
# host identifies him as (typically his Unix username):
host template1 192.168.93.0 255.255.255.0 ident sameuser
# Allow a user from host 192.168.12.10 to connect to database "template1"
# if the user's password in pg_shadow is correctly supplied:
host template1 192.168.12.10 255.255.255.255 md5
# In the absence of preceding "host" lines, these two lines will reject
# all connection attempts from 192.168.54.1 (since that entry will be
# matched first), but allow Kerberos V5-validated connections from anywhere
# else on the Internet. The zero mask means that no bits of the host IP
# address are considered, so it matches any host:
host all 192.168.54.1 255.255.255.255 reject
host all 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 krb5
# Allow users from 192.168.x.x hosts to connect to any database, if they
# pass the ident check. If, for example, ident says the user is "bryanh"
# and he requests to connect as PostgreSQL user "guest1", the connection
# is allowed if there is an entry in pg_ident.conf for map "omicron" that
# says "bryanh" is allowed to connect as "guest1":
host all 192.168.0.0 255.255.0.0 ident omicron
Authentication methods
The following describes the authentication methods in detail.
Password authenticationpasswordPostgres> database passwords are separate from any
operating system user passwords. Ordinarily, the password for each
database user is stored in the pg_shadow system catalog table.
Passwords can be managed with the query language commands
CREATE USER and ALTER USER,
e.g., CREATE USER foo WITH PASSWORD
'secret';. By default, that is, if no password has
been set up, the stored password is NULL
and password authentication will always fail for that user.
To restrict the set of users that are allowed to connect to certain
databases, list the set of users in a separate file (one user name
per line) in the same directory that pg_hba.conf> is in,
and mention the (base) name of the file after the
password>, md5>, or crypt> keyword,
respectively, in pg_hba.conf>. If you do not use this
feature, then any user that is known to the database system can
connect to any database (so long as he passes password
authentication, of course).
These files can also be used to apply a different set of passwords
to a particular database or set thereof. In that case, the files
have a format similar to the standard Unix password file
/etc/passwd, that is,
username:password
Any extra colon separated fields following the password are
ignored. The password is expected to be encrypted using the
system's crypt() function. The utility
program pg_passwd that is installed
with Postgres can be used to manage
these password files.
Lines with and without passwords can be mixed in secondary
password files. Lines without password indicate use of the main
password in pg_shadow> that is managed by
CREATE USER> and ALTER USER>. Lines with
passwords will cause that password to be used. A password entry of
+ also means using the pg_shadow password.
Alternative passwords cannot be used when using the md5>
or crypt> methods. The file will be read as
usual, but the password field will simply be ignored and the
pg_shadow> password will always be used.
Note that using alternative passwords like this means that one can
no longer use ALTER USER to change one's
password. It will still appear to work but the password one is
actually changing is not the password that the system will end up
using.
Kerberos authenticationKerberosKerberos is an industry-standard secure
authentication system suitable for distributed computing over a
public network. A description of the
Kerberos system is far beyond the scope
of this document; in all generality it can be quite complex (yet
powerful). The Kerberos
FAQ> or MIT Project Athena can be
a good starting point for exploration. Several sources for
Kerberos> distributions exist.
In order to use Kerberos>, support for it must be
enabled at build time. Both Kerberos 4 and 5 are supported
(./configure --with-krb4> or ./configure
--with-krb5> respectively).
Postgres> should operate like a normal Kerberos
service. The name of the service principal is normally
postgres, unless it was changed during the
build. Make sure that your server key file is readable (and
preferably only readable) by the Postgres server account (see
). The location of the key file
is specified with the krb_server_keyfile> run time
configuration parameter. (See also .)
The default is /etc/srvtab> if you are using Kerberos 4
and FILE:/usr/local/pgsql/etc/krb5.keytab> (or whichever
directory was specified as sysconfdir> at build time)
with Kerberos 5.
To generate the keytab file, use for example (with version 5)
kadmin% >ank -randkey postgres/server.my.domain.org>
kadmin% >ktadd -k krb5.keytab postgres/server.my.domain.org>
Read the Kerberos> documentation for details.
In the Kerberos> 5 hooks, the following assumptions
are made about user and service naming:
User principal names (anames) are assumed to contain the actual
Unix/Postgres> user name in the first component.
The Postgres> service is assumed to be have two
components, the service name and a host name, canonicalized as
in Version 4 (i.e., with all domain suffixes removed).
Parameter>
Example>
user>
frew@S2K.ORG>
user>
aoki/HOST=miyu.S2K.Berkeley.EDU@S2K.ORG>
host>
postgres_dbms/ucbvax@S2K.ORG>
If you use mod_auth_krb and mod_perl on your Apache web server,
you can use AuthType KerberosV5SaveCredentials with a mod_perl
script. This gives secure database access over the web, no extra
passwords required.
Ident-based authenticationident
The Identification Protocol is described in
RFC 1413. Virtually every Unix-like
operating system ships with an ident server that listens on TCP
port 113 by default. The basic functionality of an ident server
is to answer questions like What user initiated the
connection that goes out of your port X
and connects to my port Y?.
Since Postgres> knows both X> and
Y> when a physical connection is established, it
can interrogate the ident server on the host of the connecting
client and could theoretically determine the operating system user
for any given connection this way.
The drawback of this procedure is that it depends on the integrity
of the client: if the client machine is untrusted or compromised
an attacker could run just about any program on port 113 and
return any user name he chooses. This authentication method is
therefore only appropriate for closed networks where each client
machine is under tight control and where the database and system
administrators operate in close contact. In other words, you must
trust the machine running the ident server.
Heed the warning:
RFC 1413
The Identification Protocol is not intended as an authorization
or access control protocol.
On systems supporting SO_PEERCRED requests for Unix-domain sockets,
ident authentication can also be applied to local connections. In this
case, no security risk is added by using ident authentication; indeed
it is a preferable choice for such a system.
When using ident-based authentication, after having determined the
name of the operating system user that initiated the connection,
Postgres checks whether that user is allowed
to connect as the database user he is requesting to connect as.
This is controlled by the ident map
argument that follows the ident> keyword in the
pg_hba.conf file. The simplest ident map is
sameuser, which allows any operating system
user to connect as the database user of the same name (if the
latter exists). Other maps must be created manually.
pg_ident.conf
Ident maps are held in the file pg_ident.conf
in the data directory, which contains lines of the general form:
map-name> ident-username> database-username>
Comments and whitespace are handled in the usual way.
The map-name> is an arbitrary name that will be
used to refer to this mapping in pg_hba.conf.
The other two fields specify which operating system user is
allowed to connect as which database user. The same
map-name> can be used repeatedly to specify more
user-mappings within a single map. There is no restriction regarding
how many
database users a given operating system user may correspond to and vice
versa.
A pg_ident.conf file that could be used in
conjunction with the pg_hba.conf> file in is shown in . In this example setup, anyone
logged in to a machine on the 192.168 network that does not have
the Unix user name bryanh>, ann>, or robert> would not be granted access.
Unix user robert> would only be allowed access when he tries to
connect as Postgres user bob>, not as robert>
or anyone else. ann> would only be allowed to connect as
ann>. User bryanh> would be allowed to connect as either
bryanh> himself or as guest1>.
An example pg_ident.conf> file
#MAP IDENT-NAME POSTGRESQL-NAME
omicron bryanh bryanh
omicron ann ann
# bob has username robert on these machines
omicron robert bob
# bryanh can also connect as guest1
omicron bryanh guest1
Authentication problems
Genuine authentication failures and related problems generally
manifest themselves through error messages like the following.
No pg_hba.conf entry for host 123.123.123.123, user joeblow, database testdb
This is what you are most likely to get if you succeed in
contacting the server, but it doesn't want to talk to you. As the
message suggests, the server refused the connection request
because it found no authorizing entry in its pg_hba.conf
configuration file.
Password authentication failed for user 'joeblow'
Messages like this indicate that you contacted the server, and
it's willing to talk to you, but not until you pass the
authorization method specified in the
pg_hba.conf file. Check the password you're
providing, or check your Kerberos or IDENT software if the
complaint mentions one of those authentication types.
FATAL 1: user "joeblow" does not exist
The indicated user name was not found in pg_shadow.
FATAL 1: Database "testdb" does not exist in the system catalog.
The database you're trying to connect to doesn't exist. Note that
if you don't specify a database name, it defaults to the database
user name, which may or may not be the right thing.
Note that the server log may contain more information
about an authentication failure than is reported to the client.
If you are confused about the reason for a failure, check the log.