Where are the files postgresql.conf
and pg_hba.conf
on a Linux server running PostgreSQL 8.4 installed from Ubuntu repos?
6 Answers
Looking for "pg_hba.conf ubuntu" on Google gives you
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostgreSQL
which shows the location of the files.
The documentation states the following:
Client authentication is controlled by a configuration file, which traditionally is named pg_hba.conf and is stored in the database cluster's data directory. (HBA stands for host-based authentication.) A default pg_hba.conf file is installed when the data directory is initialized by initdb. It is possible to place the authentication configuration file elsewhere, however; see the hba_file configuration parameter.
Note it says stored in the database cluster's data directory and that it's possible to place it elsewhere, via a configuration parameter. Official documentation cannot point you to a specific folder because the actual location depends on both how the OS maker and the machine's administrator have set PostgreSQL up. Remember PostgreSQL supports a lot of different operating systems (and Linux distributions.)
As Neutrino shows, if you can access your server via psql, you can tell it to show you the file location.
Also, two tips:
- locate will help you find files you know the name of but not the location
- Debian based distributions place under /usr/share/doc documentation on how they set up different packages by default, I'm sure you'll find under /usr/share/doc/postgresql-8.4 (or maybe just postgresql) info about the configuration files. Very useful to read in case they have modified some standard behavior.
-
2Give a man a fish... blah blah, teach a man how to fish.. etc. The right way is to know how to have postgres tell you where the file is. Universally.
show hba_file;
in psql. See @neutrino's answer. Jul 17, 2019 at 10:20 -
1If and only if you can access your running PostgreSQL instance. If your HBA file is messed up you might not be able to. I've linked to Neutrino's answer.– Vinko Vrsalovic ♦Jul 18, 2019 at 8:32
-
Open a command prompt.
> psql -U postgres
=# show hba_file;
=# show config_file
When they change the names of the config settings, or you want to see something else.
=# show all;
-
Yeah, this doesn't work if you can't start your pgsql database because of a "missing"
postgresql.conf
! It's "missing" because it's not located in/var/lib/postgresql/<VERSION>/<CLUSTER_NAME>
on Ubuntu, but as someone else pointed out, in/etc/postgresql/<VERSION>/<CLUSTER_NAME>
. Why does Ubuntu have to be different from everybody else? Ugh..... And because of this, simply issuingsudo -u postgres pg_ctl -D /var/lib/postgres/<VERSION>/<CLUSTER_NAME>
results in an error because thepostgresql.conf
file is not found. Geez. :/ Jan 29 at 23:09 -
And as I learned from @milen-a-radev answer, the docs say that the
-D
option value really needs to be set to where thepostgresql.conf
file is located. That option should be renamed to-C
(for--configuration
) since it doesn't really need to be set to the data directory--which on most normal distros happens to be the (default) location of thepostgresql.conf
file, but not always (glaring at you Ubuntu....). Jan 29 at 23:16
-
As always, RTF(riendly)M. This is the right answer. Assuming that Ubuntu did things "normally", results in
pg_ctl
complaining that thepostgresql.conf
file cannot be found in the "data" directory as specified by the-D
option to thepg_ctl
command. Perhaps that option is a bit "mis-named" since it must point to where thepostgresql.conf
file is located, which on Ubuntu is in the/etc/postgres
directory...of course. Ugh. I hate Ubuntu. Jan 29 at 23:12
As Vinko said, the location is distribution-dependent. To add to his answer:
Your package management sofware will tell you where are the files installed by each package, (for example: dpkg -L postgresql
).
You can also look inside the service startup script ( typically /etc/init.d/postgresql
)
To see the configuration files from the terminal:
psql -U postgres -c 'SHOW hba_file'
psql -U postgres -c 'SHOW config_file'
To check the data directory:
echo $PGDATA
or
psql -U postgres -c 'SHOW data_directory'
sudo updatedb
andsudo locate pg_hba.conf