How to get password for sudo
Per https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances ,
The instance creator and any users that were added using the metadata sshKeys value are automatically administrators to the account, with the ability to run sudo without requiring a password.
So you don't need that non-existent password -- you need to be "added using the metadata sshKeys value"! The canonic way to do that, and I quote from that same page:
$ echo user1:$(cat ~/.ssh/key1.pub) > /tmp/a
$ echo user2:$(cat ~/.ssh/key2.pub) >> /tmp/a
$ gcloud compute project-info add-metadata --metadata-from-file sshKeys=/tmp/a
or you can use the Google Developers Console for similar purposes, see https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/console#sshkeys if you'd prefer that.
To become another non-root user on a GCE VM, first become root
via password-less sudo
(since that's how sudo
is configured on GCE VM images):
sudo su -
and then switch to the user you want to become or run a command as another use, e.g., in your case, that's:
sudo -i -u postgres