How to dump PostgreSQL database whose owner has no password?

Question

First, some background on my setup:

The server has root access disabled. So, I log-in as (say) john who also belongs to the sudo group and is therefore able to run superuser commands.

I created a new password-less user^#1 santa (using the command sudo adduser --shell /bin/bash --gecos 'Santa Claus' --disabled-password santa).

Then I changed the login session's owner to santa using the command: sudo su - santa and created a new PostgreSQL database: createdb myapp_db (the database got created without asking me for password).

Now, given the condition, how do I make an SQL dump of the database myapp_db (whose owner is santa) using the command pg_dump?

This is supposed to work, but it isn't:

john@host:~$ pg_dump myapp_db -U santa -h localhost --no-owner -W > myapp_db_backup.sql
Password: 

When I run the above command, it asks me for "password" as you can see. What password am I supposed to enter here? I didn't enter any password for the database when creating it, nor does the database owner santa have any.

So, I tried entering the password of john, the sudo user, and got this error:

"FATAL: password authentication failed for user "santa""

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I also tried (which didn't work either):

john@host:~$ su - santa
santa@host:~$ pg_dump myapp_db -U santa -h localhost --no-owner -W > myapp_db_backup.sql
Password:

This time, I created a password for the user santa and entered it. Still get the error:

"FATAL: password authentication failed for user "santa""

What am I missing here?

(Please let me know if I am missing any necessary details.)

---

More Information

(As requested in the comments.)

john@host:~$ sudo su postgres
postgres@host:~$ psql -l

                                         List of databases
          Name           |  Owner   | Encoding |   Collate   |    Ctype    |   Access privileges   
-------------------------+----------+----------+-------------+-------------+-----------------------
 app_db                  | santa    | UTF8     | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | 
 postgres                | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | 
 template0               | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | =c/postgres          +
                         |          |          |             |             | postgres=CTc/postgres
 template1               | postgres | UTF8     | en_US.UTF-8 | en_US.UTF-8 | =c/postgres          +
                         |          |          |             |             | postgres=CTc/postgres
(4 rows)

Output of \du santa:

john@host:~$ sudo -u postgres psql
postgres=# \du santa

                             List of roles
 Role name |                   Attributes                   | Member of 
-----------+------------------------------------------------+-----------
 santa     | Superuser, Create role, Create DB, Replication | {}

Answer 1

See this part of the pg_dump manpage:

   -W, --password
       Force pg_dump to prompt for a password before connecting to a database.
       This option is never essential, since pg_dump will automatically prompt
       for a password if the server demands password authentication. 

Don't use -W at all. In your case, it's just confusing.

Also, you need to know that the fact that the server asks for a password or not is not driven by the existence of this password.

It's driven by the server-side pg_hba.conf file that you need to study and possibly modify according to your needs (don't forget to reload the server after modifying it).

EDIT: reviewing your pg_hba.conf. The relevant lines are:

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
local   all             postgres                                peer
local   all             all                                     peer
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5
host    all             all             ::1/128                 md5

The 1st line concerns the postgres user. It's irrelevant for your pg_dump command since you're using the santa user with -U santa

The 2nd line concerns any other connection through Unix domain sockets (TYPE column is local). From the client, it means when you do not use -h localhost. It says that if the OS user is the same name than the db user, he doesn't need a password.

The 3rd line says that if -h localhost is used (IPv4 TCP connection), a password will always be asked to the client. The 4th line says the same with IPv6.

Based on this, this command run by the santa OS user should not ask or need a password:

 pg_dump --no-owner myapp_db > myapp_db_backup.sql

-U santa is optional because the db username is taken as the OS user by default.

Answer 2

Simple answer, drop the -h localhost.

With -h localhost it connects over TCP/IP sockets. Without it, it will connect over UNIX domain sockets. These are set differently for auth methods in the pg_hba.conf.

So try this:

john@host:~$ su - santa
santa@host:~$ pg_dump myapp_db -U santa --no-owner -W > myapp_db_backup.sql