Create a new postgres user programmatically, without interactive intervention

Question

I am trying to do this in a script:

» sudo -u postgres createuser -PE -s user1
Enter password for new role:

I do not want postgres to ask for the password interactively, so I want to do:

» sudo -u postgres createuser -PE -s user1 < /tmp/xxx

Where /tmp/xxx contains the password for the new user. But it does not work. How to get this working?

user330315 · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-01 10:24:22Z

13

You can do that using plain SQL after connecting as a superuser (e.g. postgres) to the database in question:

create user user1 password 'foobar'

If you need to do this from within a script you can put that into a sql file and then pass this to psql:

» sudo -u postgres psql --file=create_user.sql

answered Jun 1, 2013 at 10:24

user330315

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wildplasser · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-01 16:20:55Z

5

From the shell, you could use an here-document, like:

#!/bin/sh

psql -U postgres postgres <<OMG
 CREATE USER lutser password '`cat /tmp/xxx`' ;
OMG

BTW: I'don't think it is a good idea to store the password in /tmp/, not even temporally.

edited Jun 1, 2013 at 16:20

answered Jun 1, 2013 at 15:59

wildplasser

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2 Comments

blueFast Over a year ago

I understand but ... how do you enter a password programatically without having that somewhere? The way I do it: I have them in a local file (plain text) indexed by password id (that is, the passwords file is password_id:password. This file is protected, and I access it with sudo. This way I can centralize my password management, by having a simple service providing access to this file.

James Murphy Over a year ago

@blueFast these days in the cloud the best way to do it is to pass the password in via a secure mechanism like a secure key manager like AWS vault. You can do that via environment parameters on startup. That way they can be encrypted.

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