Authentication Methods

pgpool-II 3.6.5 Documentation
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# 6.2. Authentication Methods

The following subsections describe the authentication methods in more detail.

## 6.2.1. Trust Authentication

When `trust` authentication is specified, Pgpool-II assumes that anyone who can connect to the server is authorized to access connect with whatever database user name they specify.

## 6.2.2. MD5 Password Authentication

This authentication method is the password-based authentication methods in which MD-5-hashed password is sent by client. Since Pgpool-II does not has the visibility of PostgreSQL's database user password and client application only sends the MD5-hash of the password, so `md5` authentication in Pgpool-II is supported using the pool_passwd authentication file.

### 6.2.2.1. Authentication file format

This `pool_passwd` file should contain lines in the following format:

            "username:encrypted_passwd"

### 6.2.2.2. Setting md5 Authentication

here are the steps to enable `md5` authentication:

1- Login as the database's operating system user and type `"pg_md5 --md5auth --username= "` user name and `md5` encrypted password are registered into pool_passwd. If pool_passwd does not exist yet, pg_md5 command will automatically create it for you.

> Note: user name and password must be identical to those registered in PostgreSQL server

2- Add an appropriate md5 entry to `pool_hba.conf`. See Section 6.1 for more details.

3- After changing md5 password(in both pool_passwd and PostgreSQL of course), reload the pgpool configurations.

## 6.2.3. PAM Authentication

This authentication method uses PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) as the authentication mechanism. The default PAM service name is `pgpool`. PAM authentication is supported using user information on the host where Pgpool-II is executed. For more information about PAM, please read the Linux-PAM Page.

To enable PAM authentication, you need to create a service-configuration file for Pgpool-II in the system's PAM configuration directory (which is usually at `"/etc/pam.d"`). A sample service-configuration file is installed as `"share/pgpool.pam"` under the install directory.

> Note: To enable PAM support the Pgpool-II must be configured with `"--with-pam"`

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