Wiki / Authentication Methods / Authentication and access control
bsd
Authenticate using the BSD Authentication service provided by the operating system. See Section 20.14 for details.
Reading PostgreSQL 18.6.
Description
Authenticate using the BSD Authentication service provided by the operating system. See Section 20.14 for details.
- Method
- bsd
- Configuration
- pg_hba.conf
- Inventory
- User-visible source authentication method
Manual definition
20.14. BSD Authentication
This authentication method operates similarly to password except that it uses BSD Authentication to verify the password. BSD Authentication is used only to validate user name/password pairs. Therefore the user's role must already exist in the database before BSD Authentication can be used for authentication. The BSD Authentication framework is currently only available on OpenBSD.
BSD Authentication in PostgreSQL uses the auth-postgresql login type and authenticates with the postgresql login class if that's defined in login.conf. By default that login class does not exist, and PostgreSQL will use the default login class.
Note
To use BSD Authentication, the PostgreSQL user account (that is, the operating system user running the server) must first be added to the auth group. The auth group exists by default on OpenBSD systems.
Documentation and source
Source build
- Version
- 18.6
- Build
- https://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/source/v18.6/postgresql-18.6.tar.bz2
- Source fingerprint
555610c24d53e4316da5b7d3fc25c279d96856d5e0e23ee308c328c5fa881d9f
Compare versions
PostgreSQL 17 → 18: unchanged.
Compares recorded interfaces and attributes. Source fingerprints and build metadata are excluded; an absent sample is not proof of the introduction or removal release.
Related entries
Export JSON · Back to Authentication Methods · Recorded in PostgreSQL 10 through 20; the first sample is not necessarily its introduction.