password in recovery.conf [SOLVED]

[Nelson Green]

Hello all,
I am setting up a streaming replication stand-by, and the replication
role password has a single quote in it. I am unable to properly
reference the password in the conninfo setting of recovery.conf so it
will authenticate to the master. Doubling the quote gives me a syntax
error, and escaping it or quoting it with double-quotes gives me an
authentication error. The password is correct because I can copy it from
the recovery.conf and supply it when prompted by pg_basebackup, so if I
may, what is the proper way to handle single quotes within the conninfo
string?

Doubling the quote seems to work here.

Thanks Bosco, DrakoRod, and Adrian. Between the three of you it became
obvious
that I was doing something wrong. And yes, in the end you were right.
Doubling
the quote does indeed work.

It turns out it this particular password also had a \ in it, and my console
width wrapped right before it, putting it as the first character on the next
line, where I just didn't notice it until a few minutes ago. I changed that
to
a ^ for the time being, and then doubled the quote whereupon it all worked.
I
will certainly look into how to escape the backslash too, but that's for
next
week at this point.

Apologies for the noise. Just been one of those days.

Thanks,
Nelson

[John R Pierce]

Post by Nelson Green
Thanks Bosco, DrakoRod, and Adrian. Between the three of you it became
obvious
that I was doing something wrong. And yes, in the end you were right.
Doubling
the quote does indeed work.
It turns out it this particular password also had a \ in it, and my console
width wrapped right before it, putting it as the first character on the next
line, where I just didn't notice it until a few minutes ago. I changed
that to
a ^ for the time being, and then doubled the quote whereupon it all
worked. I
will certainly look into how to escape the backslash too, but that's
for next
week at this point.

I'd consider using `mkpasswd -l 15 -s 0` just to avoid any such
problems. 15 random alphanumerics is already plenty complex, 62^15th
possible combinations, without needing to mix in special characters.

$ mkpasswd -l 15 -s 0
eec1kj7ZsthlYmh
--
john r pierce 37N 122W
somewhere on the middle of the left coast

[John R Pierce]

Post by John R Pierce
I'd consider using `mkpasswd -l 15 -s 0` just to avoid any such
problems. 15 random alphanumerics is already plenty complex, 62^15th
possible combinations, without needing to mix in special characters.
$ mkpasswd -l 15 -s 0
eec1kj7ZsthlYmh

btw, thats 768,909,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible passwords. 768
septillion, using the aamerican 'short scale' naming convention. if you
could brute force try 10000/second, it would merely take
24,365,800,000,000 centuries (24 trillion).
--
john r pierce 37N 122W
somewhere on the middle of the left coast

[Gavin Flower]

Post by John R Pierce

I'd consider using `mkpasswd -l 15 -s 0` just to avoid any such
problems. 15 random alphanumerics is already plenty complex,
62^15th possible combinations, without needing to mix in special
characters.
$ mkpasswd -l 15 -s 0
eec1kj7ZsthlYmh

btw, thats 768,909,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible passwords. 768
septillion, using the aamerican 'short scale' naming convention. if
you could brute force try 10000/second, it would merely take
24,365,800,000,000 centuries (24 trillion).

So do you think a password like *Nxw7TnC2^}%(}tEz* is strong enough? :-)

I developed a Java program that generates 20 passwords (each of 16
characters) at a time, I've attached it for anyone who might be
interested. I have put it under the GPL version 3, but I might consider
releasing under other licences.


Cheers,
Gavin

[Nelson Green]

Post by John R Pierce

Post by Nelson Green
Thanks Bosco, DrakoRod, and Adrian. Between the three of you it became
obvious
that I was doing something wrong. And yes, in the end you were right.
Doubling
the quote does indeed work.
It turns out it this particular password also had a \ in it, and my console
width wrapped right before it, putting it as the first character on the next
line, where I just didn't notice it until a few minutes ago. I changed
that to
a ^ for the time being, and then doubled the quote whereupon it all
worked. I
will certainly look into how to escape the backslash too, but that's for
next
week at this point.

I'd consider using `mkpasswd -l 15 -s 0` just to avoid any such
problems. 15 random alphanumerics is already plenty complex, 62^15th
possible combinations, without needing to mix in special characters.
$ mkpasswd -l 15 -s 0
eec1kj7ZsthlYmh

Thanks John. We use apg which has similar options. But alas, I must comply
with
organizational password policies.

Regards,
Nelson

[Adrian Klaver]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Adrian Klaver
Doubling the quote seems to work here.
Thanks Bosco, DrakoRod, and Adrian. Between the three of you it became
obvious
that I was doing something wrong. And yes, in the end you were right.
Doubling
the quote does indeed work.
It turns out it this particular password also had a \ in it, and my console
width wrapped right before it, putting it as the first character on the next
line, where I just didn't notice it until a few minutes ago. I changed
that to
a ^ for the time being, and then doubled the quote whereupon it all
worked. I
will certainly look into how to escape the backslash too, but that's for
next
week at this point.

***@panda:~> psql 'dbname=test user=test_user password=test\\pwd'
psql (9.0.17)
Type "help" for help.

test=>

Apologies for the noise. Just been one of those days.
Thanks,
Nelson

[Nelson Green]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 5:51 PM, Adrian Klaver

Doubling the quote seems to work here.

Thanks Bosco, DrakoRod, and Adrian. Between the three of you it became
obvious
that I was doing something wrong. And yes, in the end you were right.
Doubling
the quote does indeed work.
It turns out it this particular password also had a \ in it, and my console
width wrapped right before it, putting it as the first character on the next
line, where I just didn't notice it until a few minutes ago. I changed
that to
a ^ for the time being, and then doubled the quote whereupon it all
worked. I
will certainly look into how to escape the backslash too, but that's for
next
week at this point.

psql (9.0.17)
Type "help" for help.
test=>

Thanks again Adrian! Figures it's that easy.

Confession time. When I'm trying to work through something like this where
different iterations are going to be tried, I sit down and spell them out
first.
But since I was remoted in and things were going so slow (and I was pretty
tired), I just tried different combinations on the single quote. When I
noticed
the backslash I tried to double it, but with no luck. However, in all
honesty I
don't know what I was doing with the single quote at that particular moment.
Bottom line is I probably shot myself in the foot in several ways with this
one.

I appreciate the patience with me.
Nelson