PostgreSQL under Lion: What's the password?

Question

I got my new lion machine. Ran the PostgreSQL installer from the PostgreSQL site for Mac and i have no multiple apps installed. One of them is "pgAdmin III.app". When I open it there is already one server connection available. localhost:5432

Whenever I try to connect to the server with a doubleclick the programm asks me for a password. I have no idea what to enter. It's not my admin password, it's not "postgres", it's not "localhost", it's not empty.

I just can't seem to connect to the server. Even when I check the properties of the localhost server the password field seems empty. However I'm not allowed to leave the password field empty.

Any idea what to do? I really need to setup postgres?

Answer 1

On my Mac OSX Lion, PostgreSQL configuration files are stored under /Library/PostgreSQL/9.0/data/

Answer 2

Haven't tried it on OSX, but on Ubuntu you can login as the system user 'postgres' to the default database 'postgres' without a password with

su postgres -c psql

You can then (re)set the password of the database superuser 'postgres'.

You can also edit the configuration file pg_hba.conf (don't know where it is located on a default OSX installation, on Ubuntu it is /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf) and grant access to the default database without authentication

# TYPE  DATABASE    USER        CIDR-ADDRESS          METHOD
host    postgres    postgres    127.0.0.1/32          trust

After editing pg_hba.conf you must reload the configuration with

pg_ctlcluster 8.4 main reload

You can then connect with pgAdmin and (re)set the password, but don't forget to change the authentication method back to md5 again...

Answer 3

here's a better answer (works in OSX HighSierra): the account used is the one you're logged onto OSX with, therefore, the password is your password!