Using fabric how can I supply a password for psql?

Question

I want to be able to log in to my AWS postgres database from a remote machine. I am using the following Fabric script:

import sys
from fabric.api import env, run, abort

env.port = 123
env.use_ssh_config = True

def setuser(user):
    """Sets the ssh user for the fabric script"""
    env.user = user
    env.password = 'mypassword'

def setenv(server):
    """Sets the environment for the fabric script"""
    env.hosts = ['staging']

def sync():
    # log into AWS server
    run("psql --host=staging.xxx.rds.amazonaws.com --username=x_user  --port=5432 --password --dbname=x_database")
    run("mypassword")

I run this Fabric script using the following command:

fab -f sync_staging.py sync --password=mypassword

This logs me into the remote machine, runs the line run("psql .... and then it prompts me for a password:

[stage] out: Password for user x_user: 

Is there any way that I can supply the password (or respond to the prompt) such that it logs me in automatically?

Answer 1

There are 2 ways of solving this that I know of:

• .pgpass password file in your home directory on remote host
• PGPASSWORD env variable (set on remote host)

If you need to set an environment variable on remote host, use with shell_env(PGPASSWORD='mypassword'), Fabric docs here: fabric.context_managers.shell_env

Hope it solves your problem.