Re: [GENERAL] createuser: How to specify a database to connect to

Schmid Andreas <Andreas.Schmid@bd.so.ch> writes:
> I'm trying to add a new DB user with the following command from my client machine:
> createuser -h my.host.name -U mysuperusername --pwprompt newusername

> I'm getting the following message:
> createuser: could not connect to database postgres: FATAL:  no pg_hba.conf entry for host "10.0.0.1", user
"mysuperusername",database "postgres", SSL on 

> Now, it's true that our pg_hba.conf doesn't allow access to the postgres database. We did this intentionally, as
usuallyno one needs to connect to this database. 

That may have been intentional but it was still a bad decision; the entire
point of the postgres database is to have a default landing-place for
connections that don't need to connect to a specific database within
the cluster.

> So I tried to do
> export PGDATABASE=sogis
> before the createuser command. But no success. Does anyone know of another way to achieve what I'm trying?

CREATE USER?

> I whish to do it with createuser rather than with the SQL command CREATE USER because this way I can avoid the
passwordfor the new user to show up anywhere in the history. 

If by "history" you're worried about the server-side statement log, this
is merest fantasy: the createuser program is not magic, it just constructs
and sends a CREATE USER command for you.  You'd actually be more secure
using psql, where (if you're superuser) you could shut off log_statement
for your session first.

If by "history" you mean ~/.psql_history, you could turn that off (psql -n)
or to protect the password specifically, you could use psql's \password
command.

            regards, tom lane