1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
2 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>20.3. Authentication Methods</title><link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheet.css" /><link rev="made" href="pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org" /><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets Vsnapshot" /><link rel="prev" href="auth-username-maps.html" title="20.2. User Name Maps" /><link rel="next" href="auth-trust.html" title="20.4. Trust Authentication" /></head><body id="docContent" class="container-fluid col-10"><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="5" align="center">20.3. Authentication Methods</th></tr><tr><td width="10%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="auth-username-maps.html" title="20.2. User Name Maps">Prev</a> </td><td width="10%" align="left"><a accesskey="u" href="client-authentication.html" title="Chapter 20. Client Authentication">Up</a></td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter 20. Client Authentication</th><td width="10%" align="right"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html" title="PostgreSQL 18.0 Documentation">Home</a></td><td width="10%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="auth-trust.html" title="20.4. Trust Authentication">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="sect1" id="AUTH-METHODS"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both">20.3. Authentication Methods <a href="#AUTH-METHODS" class="id_link">#</a></h2></div></div></div><p>
3 <span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span> provides various methods for
6 </p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>
7 <a class="link" href="auth-trust.html" title="20.4. Trust Authentication">Trust authentication</a>, which
8 simply trusts that users are who they say they are.
9 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
10 <a class="link" href="auth-password.html" title="20.5. Password Authentication">Password authentication</a>, which
11 requires that users send a password.
12 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
13 <a class="link" href="gssapi-auth.html" title="20.6. GSSAPI Authentication">GSSAPI authentication</a>, which
14 relies on a GSSAPI-compatible security library. Typically this is
15 used to access an authentication server such as a Kerberos or
16 Microsoft Active Directory server.
17 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
18 <a class="link" href="sspi-auth.html" title="20.7. SSPI Authentication">SSPI authentication</a>, which
19 uses a Windows-specific protocol similar to GSSAPI.
20 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
21 <a class="link" href="auth-ident.html" title="20.8. Ident Authentication">Ident authentication</a>, which
22 relies on an <span class="quote">“<span class="quote">Identification Protocol</span>”</span>
23 (<a class="ulink" href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1413" target="_top">RFC 1413</a>)
24 service on the client's machine. (On local Unix-socket connections,
25 this is treated as peer authentication.)
26 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
27 <a class="link" href="auth-peer.html" title="20.9. Peer Authentication">Peer authentication</a>, which
28 relies on operating system facilities to identify the process at the
29 other end of a local connection. This is not supported for remote
31 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
32 <a class="link" href="auth-ldap.html" title="20.10. LDAP Authentication">LDAP authentication</a>, which
33 relies on an LDAP authentication server.
34 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
35 <a class="link" href="auth-radius.html" title="20.11. RADIUS Authentication">RADIUS authentication</a>, which
36 relies on a RADIUS authentication server.
37 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
38 <a class="link" href="auth-cert.html" title="20.12. Certificate Authentication">Certificate authentication</a>, which
39 requires an SSL connection and authenticates users by checking the
40 SSL certificate they send.
41 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
42 <a class="link" href="auth-pam.html" title="20.13. PAM Authentication">PAM authentication</a>, which
43 relies on a PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) library.
44 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
45 <a class="link" href="auth-bsd.html" title="20.14. BSD Authentication">BSD authentication</a>, which
46 relies on the BSD Authentication framework (currently available
48 </p></li><li class="listitem"><p>
49 <a class="link" href="auth-oauth.html" title="20.15. OAuth Authorization/Authentication">OAuth authorization/authentication</a>,
50 which relies on an external OAuth 2.0 identity provider.
51 </p></li></ul></div><p>
53 Peer authentication is usually recommendable for local connections,
54 though trust authentication might be sufficient in some circumstances.
55 Password authentication is the easiest choice for remote connections.
56 All the other options require some kind of external security
57 infrastructure (usually an authentication server or a certificate
58 authority for issuing SSL certificates), or are platform-specific.
60 The following sections describe each of these authentication methods
62 </p></div><div class="navfooter"><hr /><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="auth-username-maps.html" title="20.2. User Name Maps">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="client-authentication.html" title="Chapter 20. Client Authentication">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="auth-trust.html" title="20.4. Trust Authentication">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">20.2. User Name Maps </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html" title="PostgreSQL 18.0 Documentation">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> 20.4. Trust Authentication</td></tr></table></div></body></html>