pg_basebackup: could not connect to server: fe_sendauth: no password supplied

Question

I'm trying to set up streaming replication between two Postgres servers. The master server's pg_hba.conf file is configured this way:

host    replication     ${REP_USER}     0.0.0.0/0               md5
host    ${DB_NAME}      ${DB_USER}      0.0.0.0/0               md5

And the initializer script in the slave container runs the following at startup to connect to it:

cat > ~/.pgpass <<EOS
${MASTER_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR}:5432:${REP_USER}:${REP_PASS}
EOS
chmod 0600 ~/.pgpass

echo "Cleaning up old cluster directory"
rm -rf ${PGDATA}/*

echo "Starting base backup as replicator"
pg_basebackup -h ${MASTER_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR} -D ${PGDATA} -U ${REP_USER} -vPw

All the env values are set. The problem is I keep getting this error:

pg_basebackup: could not connect to server: fe_sendauth: no password supplied

I'm not sure why this keeps happening. I have the password file in place with the right permissions. I also have the password in the recovery file, which doesn't get created because pg_basebackup fails all the time.

Any help would be appreciated...

Answer 1

Your issue is that your .pgpass file is missing the database field, and all fields are required (although you can use it * for any match). As you are using pg_basebackup (that uses the replication protocol), you need supply that as "replication":

cat > ~/.pgpass <<EOS
${MASTER_PORT_5432_TCP_ADDR}:5432:replication:${REP_USER}:${REP_PASS}
EOS
...

Using * for the database field would work too, but replication is more strict.