FATAL: password authentication failed for user "postgres" when using non-default password

Description

When trying to connect to Postgres with standard postgres user which has non-default (not postgres) password, error is thrown:

FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "postgres"

Command I use:

pgcli --host localhost --port 5431 --dbname metabot --username postgres

--password argument does nothing (password prompt isn’t shown either). Similar psql command (psql --host localhost --port 5431 --dbname metabot --username postgres) works without issues and shows password prompt. Installed pgcli via pip (v2.0.2). When installing with sudo apt install pgcli, it installs v1.6.0, and this version works well (shows password prompt and logs in after inputting the password). Tried to dump pgcli with config folder and reinstall but nothing changes.

Your environment

Ubuntu 18.04, pgcli v2.0.2

pip freeze output:

asn1crypto==0.24.0
audioread==2.1.5
backports.csv==1.0.6
beautifulsoup4==4.6.0
certifi==2018.1.18
chardet==3.0.4
cli-helpers==1.1.0
Click==7.0
colorama==0.3.7
configobj==5.0.6
cryptography==2.1.4
decorator==4.1.2
enum34==1.1.6
html5lib==0.999999999
humanize==0.5.1
idna==2.6
ipaddress==1.0.17
keyring==10.6.0
keyrings.alt==3.0
lxml==4.2.1
mutagen==1.38
mysqlclient==1.3.10
numpy==1.13.3
pathlib2==2.3.0
pgspecial==1.11.5
pick-colour-picker==1.0
prompt-toolkit==2.0.9
psutil==5.4.2
psycopg2==2.7.7
puddletag==1.2.0
pyacoustid==1.1.2
pycairo==1.16.2
pycrypto==2.6.1
Pygments==2.3.1
pygobject==3.26.1
pymad==0.10
pyOpenSSL==17.5.0
pyparsing==2.2.0
python-apt==1.6.3+ubuntu1
python-Levenshtein==0.12.0
pyxdg==0.25
requests==2.18.4
scandir==1.7
scour==0.36
SecretStorage==2.3.1
setproctitle==1.1.10
six==1.12.0
sqlparse==0.2.4
tabulate==0.8.3
terminaltables==3.1.0
urllib3==1.22
wcwidth==0.1.7
webencodings==0.5
wxPython==3.0.2.0
wxPython-common==3.0.2.0

[j-bennet]

@quezak I have a theory. It is possible, if you are using keyring, that default password for postgres was previously stored there. Now you have changed it, the stored password is not correct anymore, but pgcli is not asking you for password because it only asks if you did not provide one, and you provided one via keyring:

https://github.com/dbcli/pgcli/blob/1c66dece59d4595eee3fb33d2609e2e288a28ff4/pgcli/main.py#L459-L463

Here is how you can confirm (or disprove) the theory:

$ python
import keyring
keyring.get_password('pgcli', 'postgres@localhost')

Do you see an incorrect stored password?

If yes, the quickest fix is either updating it in keyring:

$python
import keyring
keyring.set_password('pgcli', 'postgres@localhost', 'my correct password')

or disabling keyring in ~/.config/pgcli/config.

[essien1990]

This command below worked for me

psql -h localhost -U postgres -p 5433 … postgres=# \du