31.14. The Password File

The file .pgpass in a user's home directory or the file referenced by PGPASSFILE can contain passwords to be used if the connection requires a password (and no password has been specified otherwise). On Microsoft Windows the file is named %APPDATA%\postgresql\pgpass.conf (where %APPDATA% refers to the Application Data subdirectory in the user's profile).

This file should contain lines of the following format:

hostname:port:database:username:password

Each of the first four fields can be a literal value, or *, which matches anything. The password field from the first line that matches the current connection parameters will be used. (Therefore, put more-specific entries first when you are using wildcards.) If an entry needs to contain : or \, escape this character with \. A host name of localhost matches both TCP (host name localhost) and Unix domain socket (pghost empty or the default socket directory) connections coming from the local machine. In a standby server, a database name of replication matches streaming replication connections made to the master server.

On Unix systems, the permissions on .pgpass must disallow any access to world or group; achieve this by the command chmod 0600 ~/.pgpass. If the permissions are less strict than this, the file will be ignored. On Microsoft Windows, it is assumed that the file is stored in a directory that is secure, so no special permissions check is made.