Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> writes:
> Joshua Drake <jd@commandprompt.com> writes:
>> I think something like:
>
>> psql: FATAL: Ident authentication failed for user "root"
>> HINT: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/client-authentication.html
>
>> Would be nice.
...
>
> Or to put it even more baldly: this is not an area in which you can
> improve matters significantly with five minutes' thought and a one-line
> patch. It would take some actual work.
Actually I think there is a problem with the original message that could be
improved. The problem is that "Ident" is a Postgres-specific term that a
newbie DBA is unlikely to understand. What's worse it's an ambiguous term that
is easily misunderstood to refer to the rfc1413 ident protocol which Postgres
might or might not be using.
I would suggest instead describing it using more generic terminology though
offhand I'm not sure what that would be. A detail line could include the
Postgres-specific authentication method which failed.
I do think it's true that the pg_hba setup is far more complex than it has to
be and that that's a bigger problem than a simple error message too.
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