424

How can I call psql so that it doesn't prompt for a password?

This is what I have:

psql -Umyuser < myscript.sql

However, I couldn't find the argument that passes the password, and so psql always prompts for it.

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17 Answers 17

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543

You may wish to read a summary of the ways to authenticate to PostgreSQL.

To answer your question, there are several ways provide a password for password-based authentication:

  1. Via the password prompt. Example:

    psql -h uta.biocommons.org -U foo
Password for user foo:

  2. In a pgpass file. See libpq-pgpass. Format:

    <host>:<port>:<database>:<user>:<password>

  3. With the PGPASSWORD environment variable. See libpq-envars. Example:

    export PGPASSWORD=yourpass
psql ...

# Or in one line for this invocation only:
PGPASSWORD=yourpass psql ...

  4. In the connection string The password and other options may be specified in the connection string/URI. See app-psql. Example:

    psql postgresql://username:password@dbmaster:5433/mydb?sslmode=require
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9 Comments

I think PGPASSWORD is deprecated but still works, btw. Just FYI
Yep, it's deprecated (and so noted in one of the links). Since it's come up, it's probably also worth noting that the deprecation is hotly contested because it's extremely useful for many people yet can be used in some circumstances without serious security concerns. It seems to me that it's no worse than storing .pgpass on an NFS filesystem, for example. I use PGPASSWORD routinely.
the idea that command line information is "available to all users" is based on antiquated assumptions about multi-user systems and does not apply in most modern environments where systems just run a single application and it's all automated
Fast Forward 2021: For anyone using Postgresql version 13 - PGPASSWORD=yourpass psql ... doesn't seem to work with version 13 anymore (on Debian 10 in my case), therefore I successfully did with the connection string as explained in the official docs
Works for me. psql (PostgreSQL) 13.2 on a Mac.
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202 
PGPASSWORD=[your password] psql -Umyuser < myscript.sql
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1 Comment

this works in terraform as well. you, my friend, are a lifesaver
84

You can add this command line at the beginning of your script:

export PGPASSWORD="[your password]"
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3 Comments

in my case set command did not work but export PGPASSWORD=[password] did work
it does not work in shell script. I am using it #!/bin/sh set PGPASSWORD = postgres psql -h 192.168.3.200 -U postgres incx_um << EOF DELETE FROM usrmgt.user_one_time_codes WHERE time < NOW() - INTERVAL '30 minute' EOF
Try not using spaces, eg. PGPASSWORD=password.
61

This might be an old question, but there's an alternate method you can use that no one has mentioned. It's possible to specify the password directly in the connection URI. The documentation can be found here, alternatively here.

You can provide your username and password directly in the connection URI provided to psql:

# postgresql://[user[:password]@][netloc][:port][/dbname][?param1=value1&...]
psql postgresql://username:password@localhost:5432/mydb
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2 Comments

Postrgres 9.3 ignores environment variable PGPASSWORD
It may need to quote the argument for it to work: psql.exe "postgresql://username:password@address:5432/database"
59

If you intend on having multiple hosts/database connections, the ~/.pgpass file is the way to go.

Steps:

  1. Create the file using vim ~/.pgpass or similar. Input your information in the following format: hostname:port:database:username:password Do not add string quotes around your field values. You can also use * as a wildcard for your port/database fields.
  2. You must chmod 0600 ~/.pgpass in order for it to not be silently ignored by psql.
  3. Create an alias in your bash profile that runs your psql command for you. For example:alias postygresy='psql --host hostname database_name -U username' The values should match those that you inputted to the ~/.pgpass file.
  4. Source your bash profile with . ~/.bashrc or similar.
  5. Type your alias from the command line.

Note that if you have an export PGPASSWORD='' variable set, it will take precedence over the file.

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2 Comments

You must do a chmod 600 on the file, otherwise psql will silently ignore it (according to the docs).
This may not be such a good solution on Windows servers, where many things run with users without a user directory.
23

An alternative to using PGPASSWORD environment variable is to use conninfo string according to the documentation

An alternative way to specify connection parameters is in a conninfo string or a URI, which is used instead of a database name. This mechanism give you very wide control over the connection.

$ psql "host=<server> port=5432 dbname=<db> user=<user> password=<password>"

postgres=>
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This is good for sanity testing other methods aren't working. Besides, keeping the password out of your shell history can be as simple as putting a space before a command.
14

You have to create a password file: see http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/libpq-pgpass.html for more info.

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14

If you're having problems on windows like me (I'm using Windows 7 64-bit) and set PGPASSWORD=[Password] did not work.

Then, as Kavaklioglu said in one of the comments,

export PGPASSWORD=[password]

You will need to save this at the top of the file, or before any usage so its set before being called.

Certainly does work on windows :)

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4 Comments

export PGPASSWORD=[password] does not work for me using the command line (cmd.exe) at all. Are you sure you weren't using cygwin or something similar?
Only works with cl, you added it to the file right? Now just typed it into command?
it's ok to use it in linux/mac environment, for windows, i think you should find a way to export this environment variable.
So add a global password... Thats a interesting idea as well
8

Given the security concerns about using the PGPASSWORD environment variable, I think the best overall solution is as follows:

  1. Write your own temporary pgpass file with the password you want to use.
  2. Use the PGPASSFILE environment variable to tell psql to use that file.
  3. Remove the temporary pgpass file

There are a couple points of note here. Step 1 is there to avoid mucking with the user's ~/.pgpass file that might exist. You also must make sure that the file has permissions 0600 or less.

Some have suggested leveraging bash to shortcut this as follows:

PGPASSFILE=<(echo myserver:5432:mydb:jdoe:password) psql -h myserver -U jdoe -p 5432 mydb

This uses the <() syntax to avoid needing to write the data to an actual file. But it doesn't work because psql checks what file is being used and will throw an error like this:

WARNING: password file "/dev/fd/63" is not a plain file
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2 Comments

A working example of this approach appears in stackoverflow.com/a/40614592/3696363 - another answer to this question.
Although this user didn't really ask for the same thing I'm looking for, I would say that the approach doesn't match. When using the PGPASSFILE=<(whatever) syntax, you can do things like decrypt a file and only have it present in the file descriptor that is created. By writing a temp file, you're not fundamentally solving the problem of having a file on disk with credentials. It's not fun dealing with arbitrary industry rules like that, but it's a thing many people deal with.
8

It can be done simply using PGPASSWORD. I am using psql 9.5.10. In your case the solution would be

PGPASSWORD=password psql -U myuser < myscript.sql

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6

Building on mightybyte's answer for those who aren't comfortable with *nix shell scripting, here's a working script:

#!/bin/sh
PGPASSFILE=/tmp/pgpasswd$$
touch $PGPASSFILE
chmod 600 $PGPASSFILE
echo "myserver:5432:mydb:jdoe:password" > $PGPASSFILE
export PGPASSFILE
psql mydb
rm $PGPASSFILE

The double dollar sign ($$) in /tmp/pgpasswd$$ at line 2 appends the process ID number to the file name, so that this script can be run more than once, even simultaneously, without side effects.

Note the use of the chmod command at line 4 - just like the "not a plain file" error that mightybyte described, there's also a "permissions" error if this is not done.

At line 7, you won't have to use the -hmyserver, the -pmyport, or -Ujdoe flag if you use the defaults (localhost : 5432) and only have one database user. For multiple users, (but the default connection) change that line to

psql mydb jdoe

Don't forget to make the script executable with

chmod +x runpsql (or whatever you called the script file)

UPDATE:

I took RichVel's advice and made the file unreadable before putting the password into it. That closes a slight security hole. Thanks!

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5 Comments

You can use mktemp to create a temporary file instead of coming up with your own naming scheme. It creates a new temp file (named something like /tmp/tmp.ITXUNYgiNh in Linux and /var/folders/xx/7gws2yy91vn9_t2lb8jcr2gr0000gn/T/tmp.QmbVOQk4 on MacOS X) and prints its name to stdout.
Security issue It's best to do the chmod 600 after creating the file, but before writing the password to it. As written, a malicious script on the server could continually try to read files of this format, and would sometimes succeed in getting the password. Also, if this script is interrupted for some reason, the file would be left on disk - writing a shell trap handler would address this. Given that it's not trivial to write a secure script like this, I recommend using export PGPASSWORD instead.
Thanks, @RichVel for pointing out that small security hole. Touch creating and making the file private before putting the password in it is a definite improvement. This kind of solution is needed because PGPASSWORD has been deprecated in 9.3.
Some of the docs say it's deprecated but as mentioned in a comment in this Q&A, the deprecation is contested and it still works as of Postgres 10.6
create the file in your home directory, mkdir ~/.creds; touch ~/.creds/pgpass$$ && chmod 0600 ~/.creds/pgpass$$
2

You may find this useful: Windows PSQL command line: is there a way to allow for passwordless login?

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2

8 years later...

On my mac, I had to put a line into the file ~/.pgpass like:

<IP>:<PORT>:<dbname>:<user>:<password>

Also see:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/libpq-pgpass.html
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Pgpass

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2 Comments

Don't use -W for psql if you use .pgpass. This parameter cancel .pgpass usage.
Also ensure permissions u=rw for that file.
1

This also works for other postgresql clis for example you can run pgbench in non-interactive mode.

export PGPASSWORD=yourpassword
/usr/pgsql-9.5/bin/pgbench -h $REMOTE_PG_HOST -p 5432 -U postgres -c 12 -j 4 -t 10000 example > pgbench.out 2>&1 &
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1

On Windows worked the combination of url string and using psql options:

> psql -d postgresql://username:password@localhost:5432/mydb -f myscript.sql

passing the the command without -d was not working, just connected to the database, but no execution of the script

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On Ubuntu worked too!
-1

I find, that psql show password prompt even you define PGPASSWORD variable, but you can specify -w option for psql to omit password prompt.

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-6

Use -w in the command: psql -h localhost -p 5432 -U user -w

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