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Authentication Methods
postgresql.org /docs/9.5/static/auth-methods.html
trust authentication is appropriate and very convenient for local connections on a single-user workstation. It is
usually not appropriate by itself on a multiuser machine. However, you might be able to use trust even on a
multiuser machine, if you restrict access to the server's Unix-domain socket file using file-system permissions. To do
this, set the unix_socket_permissions (and possibly unix_socket_group) configuration parameters as
described in Section 18.3. Or you could set the unix_socket_directories configuration parameter to place the
socket file in a suitably restricted directory.
Setting file-system permissions only helps for Unix-socket connections. Local TCP/IP connections are not restricted
by file-system permissions. Therefore, if you want to use file-system permissions for local security, remove the host
... 127.0.0.1 ... line from pg_hba.conf, or change it to a non-trust authentication method.
trust authentication is only suitable for TCP/IP connections if you trust every user on every machine that is
allowed to connect to the server by the pg_hba.conf lines that specify trust. It is seldom reasonable to use
trust for any TCP/IP connections other than those from localhost (127.0.0.1).
If you are at all concerned about password "sniffing" attacks then md5 is preferred. Plain password should always
be avoided if possible. However, md5 cannot be used with the db_user_namespace feature. If the connection is
protected by SSL encryption then password can be used safely (though SSL certificate authentication might be a
better choice if one is depending on using SSL).
PostgreSQL database passwords are separate from operating system user passwords. The password for each
database user is stored in the pg_authid system catalog. Passwords can be managed with the SQL commands
CREATE USER and ALTER ROLE, e.g., CREATE USER foo WITH PASSWORD 'secret'. If no password has
been set up for a user, the stored password is null and password authentication will always fail for that user.
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GSSAPI support has to be enabled when PostgreSQL is built; see Chapter 15 for more information.
When GSSAPI uses Kerberos, it uses a standard principal in the format servicename/hostname@realm. The
PostgreSQL server will accept any principal that is included in the keytab used by the server, but care needs to be
taken to specify the correct principal details when making the connection from the client using the krbsrvname
connection parameter. (See also Section 31.1.2.) The installation default can be changed from the default
postgres at build time using ./configure --with-krb-srvnam=whatever. In most environments, this
parameter never needs to be changed. Some Kerberos implementations might require a different service name,
such as Microsoft Active Directory which requires the service name to be in upper case (POSTGRES).
hostname is the fully qualified host name of the server machine. The service principal's realm is the preferred
realm of the server machine.
Client principals can be mapped to different PostgreSQL database user names with pg_ident.conf. For example,
pgusername@realm could be mapped to just pgusername. Alternatively, you can use the full username@realm
principal as the role name in PostgreSQL without any mapping.
PostgreSQL also supports a parameter to strip the realm from the principal. This method is supported for backwards
compatibility and is strongly discouraged as it is then impossible to distinguish different users with the same user
name but coming from different realms. To enable this, set include_realm to 0. For simple single-realm
installations, include_realm combined with the krb_realm parameter (which checks that the realm provided
matches exactly what is in the krb_realm parameter) would be a secure but less capable option compared to
specifying an explicit mapping in pg_ident.conf.
Make sure that your server keytab file is readable (and preferably only readable) by the PostgreSQL server account.
(See also Section 17.1.) The location of the key file is specified by the krb_server_keyfile configuration parameter.
The default is /usr/local/pgsql/etc/krb5.keytab (or whatever directory was specified as sysconfdir at
build time). For security reasons, it is recommended to use a separate keytab just for the PostgreSQL server rather
than opening up permissions on the system keytab file.
The keytab file is generated by the Kerberos software; see the Kerberos documentation for details. The following
example is for MIT-compatible Kerberos 5 implementations:
When connecting to the database make sure you have a ticket for a principal matching the requested database user
name. For example, for database user name fred, principal fred@EXAMPLE.COM would be able to connect. To
also allow principal fred/users.example.com@EXAMPLE.COM, use a user name map, as described in Section
19.2.
include_realm
If set to 0, the realm name from the authenticated user principal is stripped off before being passed through
the user name mapping (Section 19.2). This is discouraged and is primarily available for backwards
compatibility as it is not secure in multi-realm environments unless krb_realm is also used. Users are
recommended to leave include_realm set to the default (1) and to provide an explicit mapping in
pg_ident.conf.
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map
Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details. For a
GSSAPI/Kerberos principal, such as username@EXAMPLE.COM (or, less commonly,
username/hostbased@EXAMPLE.COM), the user name used for mapping is username@EXAMPLE.COM (or
username/hostbased@EXAMPLE.COM, respectively), unless include_realm has been set to 0, in which
case username (or username/hostbased) is what is seen as the system user name when mapping.
krb_realm
Sets the realm to match user principal names against. If this parameter is set, only users of that realm will be
accepted. If it is not set, users of any realm can connect, subject to whatever user name mapping is done.
When using Kerberos authentication, SSPI works the same way GSSAPI does; see Section 19.3.3 for details.
include_realm
If set to 0, the realm name from the authenticated user principal is stripped off before being passed through
the user name mapping (Section 19.2). This is discouraged and is primarily available for backwards
compatibility as it is not secure in multi-realm environments unless krb_realm is also used. Users are
recommended to leave include_realm set to the default (1) and to provide an explicit mapping in
pg_ident.conf.
map
Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details. For a
SSPI/Kerberos principal, such as username@EXAMPLE.COM (or, less commonly,
username/hostbased@EXAMPLE.COM), the user name used for mapping is username@EXAMPLE.COM (or
username/hostbased@EXAMPLE.COM, respectively), unless include_realm has been set to 0, in which
case username (or username/hostbased) is what is seen as the system user name when mapping.
krb_realm
Sets the realm to match user principal names against. If this parameter is set, only users of that realm will be
accepted. If it is not set, users of any realm can connect, subject to whatever user name mapping is done.
Note: When ident is specified for a local (non-TCP/IP) connection, peer authentication (see Section
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19.3.6) will be used instead.
map
Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details.
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 PostgreSQL
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 can theoretically determine the operating system user for any given connection.
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
Some ident servers have a nonstandard option that causes the returned user name to be encrypted, using a key
that only the originating machine's administrator knows. This option must not be used when using the ident server
with PostgreSQL, since PostgreSQL does not have any way to decrypt the returned string to determine the actual
user name.
map
Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details.
Peer authentication is only available on operating systems providing the getpeereid() function, the
SO_PEERCRED socket parameter, or similar mechanisms. Currently that includes Linux, most flavors of BSD
including OS X, and Solaris.
LDAP authentication can operate in two modes. In the first mode, which we will call the simple bind mode, the
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server will bind to the distinguished name constructed as prefix username suffix. Typically, the prefix
parameter is used to specify cn=, or DOMAIN\ in an Active Directory environment. suffix is used to specify the
remaining part of the DN in a non-Active Directory environment.
In the second mode, which we will call the search+bind mode, the server first binds to the LDAP directory with a
fixed user name and password, specified with ldapbinddn and ldapbindpasswd, and performs a search for the
user trying to log in to the database. If no user and password is configured, an anonymous bind will be attempted to
the directory. The search will be performed over the subtree at ldapbasedn, and will try to do an exact match of the
attribute specified in ldapsearchattribute. Once the user has been found in this search, the server disconnects
and re-binds to the directory as this user, using the password specified by the client, to verify that the login is correct.
This mode is the same as that used by LDAP authentication schemes in other software, such as Apache
mod_authnz_ldap and pam_ldap. This method allows for significantly more flexibility in where the user objects
are located in the directory, but will cause two separate connections to the LDAP server to be made.
ldapserver
Names or IP addresses of LDAP servers to connect to. Multiple servers may be specified, separated by
spaces.
ldapport
Port number on LDAP server to connect to. If no port is specified, the LDAP library's default port setting will
be used.
ldaptls
Set to 1 to make the connection between PostgreSQL and the LDAP server use TLS encryption. Note that this
only encrypts the traffic to the LDAP server — the connection to the client will still be unencrypted unless SSL
is used.
ldapprefix
String to prepend to the user name when forming the DN to bind as, when doing simple bind authentication.
ldapsuffix
String to append to the user name when forming the DN to bind as, when doing simple bind authentication.
ldapbasedn
Root DN to begin the search for the user in, when doing search+bind authentication.
ldapbinddn
DN of user to bind to the directory with to perform the search when doing search+bind authentication.
ldapbindpasswd
Password for user to bind to the directory with to perform the search when doing search+bind authentication.
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ldapsearchattribute
Attribute to match against the user name in the search when doing search+bind authentication. If no attribute
is specified, the uid attribute will be used.
ldapurl
An RFC 4516 LDAP URL. This is an alternative way to write some of the other LDAP options in a more
compact and standard form. The format is
ldap://host[:port]/basedn[?[attribute][?[scope]]]
scope must be one of base, one, sub, typically the latter. Only one attribute is used, and some other
components of standard LDAP URLs such as filters and extensions are not supported.
For non-anonymous binds, ldapbinddn and ldapbindpasswd must be specified as separate options.
To use encrypted LDAP connections, the ldaptls option has to be used in addition to ldapurl. The ldaps
URL scheme (direct SSL connection) is not supported.
LDAP URLs are currently only supported with OpenLDAP, not on Windows.
It is an error to mix configuration options for simple bind with options for search+bind.
When a connection to the database server as database user someuser is requested, PostgreSQL will attempt to
bind to the LDAP server using the DN cn=someuser, dc=example, dc=net and the password provided by the
client. If that connection succeeds, the database access is granted.
When a connection to the database server as database user someuser is requested, PostgreSQL will attempt to
bind anonymously (since ldapbinddn was not specified) to the LDAP server, perform a search for
(uid=someuser) under the specified base DN. If an entry is found, it will then attempt to bind using that found
information and the password supplied by the client. If that second connection succeeds, the database access is
granted.
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Some other software that supports authentication against LDAP uses the same URL format, so it will be easier to
share the configuration.
Tip: Since LDAP often uses commas and spaces to separate the different parts of a DN, it is often
necessary to use double-quoted parameter values when configuring LDAP options, as shown in the
examples.
When using RADIUS authentication, an Access Request message will be sent to the configured RADIUS server.
This request will be of type Authenticate Only, and include parameters for user name, password (encrypted)
and NAS Identifier. The request will be encrypted using a secret shared with the server. The RADIUS server
will respond to this server with either Access Accept or Access Reject. There is no support for RADIUS
accounting.
radiusserver
The name or IP address of the RADIUS server to connect to. This parameter is required.
radiussecret
The shared secret used when talking securely to the RADIUS server. This must have exactly the same value
on the PostgreSQL and RADIUS servers. It is recommended that this be a string of at least 16 characters.
This parameter is required.
Note: The encryption vector used will only be cryptographically strong if PostgreSQL is built
with support for OpenSSL. In other cases, the transmission to the RADIUS server should only
be considered obfuscated, not secured, and external security measures should be applied if
necessary.
radiusport
The port number on the RADIUS server to connect to. If no port is specified, the default port 1812 will be
used.
radiusidentifier
The string used as NAS Identifier in the RADIUS requests. This parameter can be used as a second
parameter identifying for example which database user the user is attempting to authenticate as, which can
be used for policy matching on the RADIUS server. If no identifier is specified, the default postgresql will
be used.
The following configuration options are supported for SSL certificate authentication:
map
Allows for mapping between system and database user names. See Section 19.2 for details.
pamservice
Note: If PAM is set up to read /etc/shadow, authentication will fail because the PostgreSQL server
is started by a non-root user. However, this is not an issue when PAM is configured to use LDAP or
other authentication methods.
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