How to recover the password for postgres user (admin user) of PostgreSQL

This article explains the steps to recover the password for postgres user (admin user) of PostgreSQL.

Step1: Login to the server via ssh as root.

Step2: Update the following line in pg_hba.conf file.

host    all      postgres    127.0.0.1/32     trust

Step3: Restart PostgreSQL service.

#systemctl restart postgresql

Step4: Login to the PostgreSQL shell.

#psql -h localhost -U postgres

Step5: Modify the password for postgres user.

>ALTER USER postgres with password 'new-password';

Where new password need to be replaced with the required value.

Step6: Revert the changed in pg_hba.conf file.

host    all      postgres    127.0.0.1/32     md5

Step7: Restart PostgreSQL service.

#systemctl restart postgresql

That's all…