Re: BUG #1001: Inconsistent authentication between psql and

On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, PostgreSQL Bugs List wrote:

> I use "ident sameuser" authentication.  Here are the relevant details from pg_hba.conf.
>
> local   all         all                                             ident sameuser
> host    all         all         127.0.0.1         255.255.255.255   ident sameuser
> host    all         all         0.0.0.0           0.0.0.0           reject
>
> All is well with psql authentication.  However, when I tried to
> use knoda/hk_classes to access the database, I could not get
> authenticated.  A typical error message was IDENT authentication failed
> for user "irwin".  When I traced this down through the hk_classes code
> it was using PQconnectdb to connnect to the database, and there were
> complaints in the postgresql log that the identd server was not
> available.  All knoda/hk_classes/PQconnectdb problems disappeared when I
> installed identd (apt-get install pidentd) on my Debian stable system.
> So all seems well when identd is installed, but there may be a security
> concern with psql when it is not.  On the other hand, if psql is
> actually secure when identd is not running, then why isn't PQconnectdb
> using the exact same (secure) method of authentication for this case?

My first guess is that knoda/hk_classes was going to 127.0.0.1 and psql
was going through the local socket.  local/ident is different from
host/ident (see the section on ident authentication), the latter requires
an ident server, the former does not.