How to make psql to default to localhost?
If you don't like the default of connecting via a unix socket, you can set the environment variable PGHOST
. I have
export PGHOST="db"
in my ~/.bashrc
, to connect to the server with that name. A few more handy environment variables are documented at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/libpq-envars.html
In fact, it works as documented.
When the host name is omitted, psql
connects to the Unix-domain socket whose path is compiled in. That part works in your case, otherwise it would output a different error message than what the question shows.
The error message in the question:
psql: FATAL: Ident authentication failed for user "postgres"
relates to the fact that only the Unix user postgres has the permission to connect as the database user postgres when using a Unix-domain socket. This is configured in the pg_hba.conf
file.
what you should typically do in Ubuntu when you're logged in as a normal user, but you're the administrator of the system:
$ sudo -u postgres psql