How to alter role from command line in postgresql?

Question

I'm trying to build a setup script to automate the development environments creation, but I'm having trouble both trying to pipe or using the -c modifier for psql.

I've tried:

sudo su postgres psql -c "ALTER ROLE postgres WITH password 'pass'"

and

sudo su postgres psql -c "ALTER ROLE postgres WITH password 'pass';"

Both of which say "ALTER: command not found"

I've also tried pipe, but I'm not able to combine it with su correctly

eg: I tried something like

sudo su postgres echo "ALTER ROLE postgres WITH password 'pass'" | psql 

But postgres can't execute "echo"

And:

echo "ALTER ROLE postgres WITH password 'pass'" | sudo su psql

Which just doesn't work.

So, my first question is: how can I execute this simple command from a sh file?

And the second one, less related: how can I use different users in the commands chained with pipe?

Answer 1

What's wrong is the lack of -c or --command for su to indicate that the rest of the line is a command.

But su is not needed anyway, because there's already sudo. Do this instead:

sudo -u postgres psql -c "ALTER ROLE postgres WITH password 'pass'"