Re: BUG #8586: Misleading fe_sendauth error message

Tom Lane wrote:

> mle+tools@mega-nerd.com writes:
> > Running the command:
> >     PGPASSFILE=pgpass psql --no-password --username myname mydb
> > --command="\dt"
> > works fine if the port number in the pgpass file is correct, but if the port
> > number is incorrect the error message is:
> >     psql: fe_sendauth: no password supplied
> > which is highly misleading. Surely the error message should be "connection
> > refused" or some such?
>
> I'm not sure how we could improve that.  If the port number in the
> password file doesn't match the intended connection, that means the
> entry doesn't apply to this connection.  We can hardly issue error
> messages on the basis of the presence of unrelated entries in a
> .pgpass file.  So what the code is seeing is that the server demanded
> a password (or so I'd assume), and it did not have one to give.

I haven't read the code, but my guess is that psql does the following:

 a) Grabs the user and database name from command line.
 b) Looks up dbname in pgpassfile to get host and port number etc.
 c) Connects to host:port and uses supplied username/password.

When the connect fails in step c), the error should be "connection failed".

Is this not how it should work?

Erik
--
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Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/