New in v20.1: The ALTER ROLE statement can be used to add, change, or remove a role's password and to change the login privileges for a role.
Since the keywords ROLE and USER can now be used interchangeably in SQL statements for enhanced Postgres compatibility, ALTER ROLE is now an alias for ALTER USER.
Considerations
- Password creation and alteration is supported only in secure clusters.
Required privileges
New in v20.1: To alter other roles, the role must have the CREATEROLE parameter set.
Synopsis
Parameters
| Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
name |
The name of the role whose password you want to create or add. |
password |
Let the role authenticate their access to a secure cluster using this new password. Passwords should be entered as a string literal. For compatibility with PostgreSQL, a password can also be entered as an identifier. To prevent a role from using password authentication and to mandate certificate-based client authentication, set the password as NULL. |
VALID UNTIL |
The date and time (in the timestamp format) after which the password is not valid. |
LOGIN/NOLOGIN |
The LOGIN parameter allows a role to login with one of the client authentication methods. Setting the parameter to NOLOGIN prevents the role from logging in using any authentication method. |
CREATEROLE/NOCREATEROLE |
Allow or disallow the role to create, alter, and drop other roles. By default, the parameter is set to NOCREATEROLE for all non-admin and non-root roles. |
Examples
Change password using a string literal
> ALTER ROLE carl WITH PASSWORD 'ilov3beefjerky';
ALTER ROLE 1
Change password using an identifier
The following statement changes the password to ilov3beefjerky, as above:
> ALTER ROLE carl WITH PASSWORD ilov3beefjerky;
This is equivalent to the example in the previous section because the password contains only lowercase characters.
In contrast, the following statement changes the password to thereisnotomorrow, even though the password in the syntax contains capitals, because identifiers are normalized automatically:
> ALTER ROLE carl WITH PASSWORD ThereIsNoTomorrow;
To preserve case in a password specified using identifier syntax, use double quotes:
> ALTER ROLE carl WITH PASSWORD "ThereIsNoTomorrow";
Set password validity
The following statement sets the date and time after which the password is not valid:
> ALTER ROLE carl VALID UNTIL '2021-01-01';
Prevent a role from using password authentication
The following statement prevents the role from using password authentication and mandates certificate-based client authentication:
> ALTER ROLE carl WITH PASSWORD NULL;
Change login privileges for a role
The following statement prevents the role from logging in with any client authentication method:
> ALTER ROLE carl NOLOGIN;
> SHOW ROLES;
username | options | member_of
-----------+------------+------------
admin | CREATEROLE | {}
carl | NOLOGIN | {}
root | CREATEROLE | {admin}
(3 rows)
The following statement allows the role to log in with one of the client authentication methods:
> ALTER ROLE carl LOGIN;
> SHOW ROLES;
username | options | member_of
-----------+------------+------------
admin | CREATEROLE | {}
carl | | {}
root | CREATEROLE | {admin}
(3 rows)
Allow the role to create other roles
> SHOW ROLES;
username | options | member_of
-----------+------------+------------
admin | CREATEROLE | {}
carl | | {}
root | CREATEROLE | {admin}
(3 rows)
> ALTER ROLE carl with CREATEROLE;
> SHOW ROLES;
username | options | member_of
-----------+------------+------------
admin | CREATEROLE | {}
carl | CREATEROLE | {}
root | CREATEROLE | {admin}
(3 rows)
See also
DROP ROLESHOW ROLESGRANT <privileges>SHOW GRANTS- Create Security Certificates
- Other SQL Statements
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