Setting up Postgres locally with peer-authentication
Table of Contents
It's a common task to want a local database available for development purposes. This article tells you how to do this with PostgreSQL on Debian, with peer-authentication so you can login locally without a password.
1. Setup
Install it from apt:
sudo apt install postgresql
Note which version of Postgres you have installed. For me it is 13.
Now try to connect with:
psql
If that doesn't work it's because by default the only user account is "postgres". It's a good idea to make a separate user for our purposes. By matching the Postgres username to your system username we can do "peer authentication" which means no password is required. Let's do that now.
sudo -u postgres psql
Now you are in the postgres shell:
create user yoursystemname with createdb createrole superuser; create database yoursystemname; \du
Now quit out of that and test you can login as your username by simply typing:
psql
2. Usage
2.1. If your app supports peer-authentication
Now you may create databases for your apps at your leisure just by
connecting with psql and running CREATE DATABASE:
psql create database my_app;
2.2. If your app requires a user+password
If your app requires a user+password, you may create database and user for your app like so (we are using database and username the same):
psql create user my_app with password 'password'; create database my_app owner my_app;