Manage Passwords

This is part of the Charmed PostgreSQL Tutorial. Please refer to this page for more information and the overview of the content.

Passwords

When we accessed PostgreSQL earlier in this tutorial, we needed to use a password manually. Passwords help to secure our database and are essential for security. Over time it is a good practice to change the password frequently. Here we will go through setting and changing the password for the admin user.

Retrieve the password

As previously mentioned, the operator’s password can be retrieved by running the get-password action on the Charmed PostgreSQL application:

juju run-action postgresql/leader get-password --wait

Running the command should output:

unit-postgresql-0:
  UnitId: postgresql/0
  id: "14"
  results:
    operator-password: eItxBiOYeMf7seSv
  status: completed
  timing:
    completed: 2023-03-20 09:17:51 +0000 UTC
    enqueued: 2023-03-20 09:17:49 +0000 UTC
    started: 2023-03-20 09:17:50 +0000 UTC

Rotate the password

You can change the operator’s password to a new random password by entering:

juju run-action postgresql/leader set-password --wait

Running the command should output:

unit-postgresql-0:
  UnitId: postgresql/0
  id: "16"
  results:
    operator-password: npGdNGNGVtu7SO50
  status: completed
  timing:
    completed: 2023-03-20 09:18:11 +0000 UTC
    enqueued: 2023-03-20 09:18:08 +0000 UTC
    started: 2023-03-20 09:18:10 +0000 UTC

Please notice the status: completed above which means the password has been successfully updated. The password should be different from the previous password.

Set the new password

You can change the password to a specific password by entering:

juju run-action postgresql/leader set-password password=my-password --wait

Running the command should output:

unit-postgresql-0:
  UnitId: postgresql/0
  id: "18"
  results:
    operator-password: my-password
  status: completed
  timing:
    completed: 2023-03-20 09:20:06 +0000 UTC
    enqueued: 2023-03-20 09:20:04 +0000 UTC
    started: 2023-03-20 09:20:05 +0000 UTC

The password should match whatever you passed in when you entered the command.

Set the new password for the specific user

You can change the password for a specific user by entering:

juju run-action postgresql/leader set-password username=my-user password=my-password --wait

Read more about internal operator users here.