I am connected to database as postgres user. '\!exec ..' doesn't work if I connect to the database from other host but it does work if I connect to the database from server where I have PostGreSQL installed. pg_read_file doesn't work in any case. Techdb=# \! exec cat /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf cat: cannot open /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf
thats because psql runs the command on the LOCAL server that the user is running psql on. would be all kinda security problems if a user could run commands on the remote server without having logged onto it as a regular user.