Install and configure PostgreSQL

[powersj]

Note:
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[wesleyneo]

@powersj

PostgreSQL supports multiple client authentication methods. By default, the IDENT authentication method is used for postgres and local users. Please refer to the PostgreSQL Administrator’s Guide if you would like to configure alternatives like Kerberos.

I would suggest that this paragraph needs to be rephrased. The concept of a default authentication mechanism is confusing. For beginners who use this document (it is the among the top results on Google for “ubuntu postgresql”) to setup their instance for the very first time, the paragraph gives the impression that it is postgresql that has a default authentication method. As you may know, it is not the case. Default authentication methods are decided by package maintainers and vary depending on the distribution.

In addition, the default configuration in Ubuntu now uses ‘peer’ authentication as its default for ‘local’ connections and ‘md5’ for ‘host’ connections. IDENT is irrelevant.

[athos-ribeiro]

@wesleyneo,

Thank you for your feedback. Sorry this took so long, but we’ve been working through lots of feedback received on these docs. We think we’ve now addressed all feedback above this comment by editing the original text above. Are our edits OK, and have we correctly understood and addressed your feedback? If not, please let us know. Otherwise, as the feedback is incorporated, we’ll delete the feedback comments to clean up in about a month from now.