DocsSql ReferenceInternalsCatalogsCatalog Pg Authid

pg_authid

The catalog pg_authid contains information about database authorization identifiers (roles). A role subsumes the concepts of “users” and “groups”. A user is essentially just a role with the rolcanlogin flag set. Any role (with or without rolcanlogin) can have other roles as members; see pg_auth_members.

Since this catalog contains passwords, it must not be publicly readable. pg_roles is a publicly readable view on pg_authid that blanks out the password field.

Because user identities are cluster-wide, pg_authid is shared across all databases of a cluster: there is only one copy of pg_authid per cluster, not one per database.

pg_authid Columns

Column TypeDescription
oid oidRow identifier
rolname nameRole name
rolsuper boolRole has superuser privileges
rolinherit boolRole automatically inherits privileges of roles it is a member of
rolcreaterole boolRole can create more roles
rolcreatedb boolRole can create databases
rolcanlogin boolRole can log in. That is, this role can be given as the initial session authorization identifier.
rolreplication boolRole is a replication role. A replication role can initiate replication connections and create and drop replication slots.
rolbypassrls boolRole bypasses every row-level security policy.
rolconnlimit int4For roles that can log in, this sets maximum number of concurrent connections this role can make. -1 means no limit.
rolpassword textPassword (possibly encrypted); null if none. The format depends on the form of encryption used.
rolvaliduntil timestamptzPassword expiry time (only used for password authentication); null if no expiration

For an MD5 encrypted password, rolpassword column will begin with the string md5 followed by a 32-character hexadecimal MD5 hash. The MD5 hash will be of the user’s password concatenated to their user name. For example, if user joe has password xyzzy, Tacnode will store the md5 hash of xyzzyjoe.

If the password is encrypted with SCRAM-SHA-256, it has the format:

SCRAM-SHA-256$<iteration count>:<salt>$<StoredKey>:<ServerKey>

where salt, StoredKey and ServerKey are in Base64 encoded format. This format is the same as that specified by RFC 5803.

A password that does not follow either of those formats is assumed to be unencrypted.