The following documentation comment has been logged on the website: Page: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/libpq-pgpass.html Description:
The documentation of the .pgpass password file is incomplete in the Unix case (https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/libpq-pgpass.html): It does not mention how the .pgpass File is actually found. One would assume it uses the getpwent() function to find the current users homedirectory and locate the .pgpass file there, but this is not the case. It only looks at the HOME environment variable. If you change the user using setuid() and do not change HOME as well, the file not be found. Or assume you start a DB client as root by using su to change the user id, things will not work: # /bin/su -c "startx -- " - xpos This starts X11 and changes to the user xpos, but it does only change the user id, not $HOME.
