Accessing PostgreSQL Server From Remote Machine

Today I was trying to remotely connect to PostgreSQL server and it took me some time to configure it. So, in this short blog I am sharing the procedure to make it work.

1. Edit the pg_hba.conf file to enable client connections as shown below. The important thing is the use of 0.0.0.0/0 to allow client access from any IP address. You can also define a subset of ip here.

   # TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD
   
   # "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
   local   all             all                                     trust
   # IPv4 local connections:
   host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust
   host    all             all             0.0.0.0/0                trust
   # IPv6 local connections:
   host    all             all             ::1/128                 trust
   # Allow replication connections from localhost, by a user with the
   # replication privilege.
   #local   replication     postgres                                md5
   host    replication     postgres        0.0.0.0/0               trust
   host    replication     postgres        ::1/128                 trust
   

2. Edit the postgresql.conf file and change listen_addresses = ‘*’ . This means any client can access the server. By default value is local. You can also specify a comma separated list of ip address also.
3. Restart the postgreSQL server either using postgres service or first killing the process and then starting using pg_ctl script.
4. The last and most important thing is to edit the /etc/sysconfig/iptables file and add entry to allow access to 5432 port. This can be done as shown below. Please add the line shown below in iptables file.
   -A INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 5432 -j ACCEPT
5. Then restart the iptables service using service iptables restart
6. Finally test it with psql client by executing following command ./psql -U postgres -h 192.168.0.10 -p 5432