Subject: Re: bug#38198: missing shell for postgresql system user
From: Giovanni Biscuolo <[email-masked]>
To: Gábor Boskovits <[email-masked]>
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2019 11:02:15 +0100
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Hello Gábor,

Gábor Boskovits <[email-masked]> writes:

[...]

>> To access a database server on localhost for the first time as the user
>> postgres (the superuser) a person should use:
>>
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
>> sudo su postgres -c 'psql'
>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

[...]

> I would not mind this change, I think it is ok. However it is easy to
> work around this with su -s.
> I usually do that.

Oh, that's the real solution: thanks! (I should study more...)

  sudo su postgres -s psql

Since giving a shell to the postgres user is **not** the solution, I'm
closing this bug.

I'll try to send a patch to the relevant documentation in the manual,
since now that we changed "trust" to "peer" a regular user cannot
connect to a newly initialized database using `psql -U postgres` (and is
good for security reasons); the user must be part of the "wheel" group
(or be authorized via sudoers in other ways) to be able to use `sudo su
postgres -s psql`

[...]

Thanks! Gio'

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures