Connecting to PostgreSQL with Kerberos authentication - Amazon Relational Database Service
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Connecting to PostgreSQL with Kerberos authentication

You can connect to PostgreSQL with Kerberos authentication with the pgAdmin interface or with a command-line interface such as psql. For more information about connecting, see Connecting to a DB instance running the PostgreSQL database engine . For information about obtaining the endpoint, port number, and other details needed for connection, see Connect to a PostgreSQL DB instance.

Note

GSSAPI authentication and encryption in PostgreSQL are implemented by the Kerberos library libkrb5.so. Features such as postgres_fdw and dblink also rely on this same library for outbound connections with Kerberos authentication or encryption.

To use pgAdmin to connect to PostgreSQL with Kerberos authentication, take the following steps:

  1. Launch the pgAdmin application on your client computer.

  2. On the Dashboard tab, choose Add New Server.

  3. In the Create - Server dialog box, enter a name on the General tab to identify the server in pgAdmin.

  4. On the Connection tab, enter the following information from your RDS for PostgreSQL database.

    • For Host, enter the endpoint for the RDS for PostgreSQL DB instance. An endpoint looks similar to the following:

      RDS-DB-instance.111122223333.aws-region.rds.amazonaws.com

      To connect to an on-premises Microsoft Active Directory from a Windows client, you use the domain name of the Amazon Managed Active Directory instead of rds.amazonaws.com in the host endpoint. For example, suppose that the domain name for the Amazon Managed Active Directory is corp.example.com. Then for Host, the endpoint would be specified as follows: 

      RDS-DB-instance.111122223333.aws-region.corp.example.com

    • For Port, enter the assigned port.

    • For Maintenance database, enter the name of the initial database to which the client will connect.

    • For Username, enter the user name that you entered for Kerberos authentication in Step 7: Create PostgreSQL users for your Kerberos principals .

  5. Choose Save.

To use psql to connect to PostgreSQL with Kerberos authentication, take the following steps:

  1. At a command prompt, run the following command.

    kinit username

    Replace username with the user name. At the prompt, enter the password stored in the Microsoft Active Directory for the user.

  2. If the PostgreSQL DB instance is using a publicly accessible VPC, put IP address for your DB instance endpoint in your /etc/hosts file on the EC2 client. For example, the following commands obtain the IP address and then put it in the /etc/hosts file.

    % dig +short PostgreSQL-endpoint.Amazon-Region.rds.amazonaws.com  
;; Truncated, retrying in TCP mode.
ec2-34-210-197-118.Amazon-Region.compute.amazonaws.com.
34.210.197.118 

% echo " 34.210.197.118  PostgreSQL-endpoint.Amazon-Region.rds.amazonaws.com" >> /etc/hosts

    If you're using an on-premises Microsoft Active Directory from a Windows client, then you need to connect using a specialized endpoint. Instead of using the Amazon domain rds.amazonaws.com in the host endpoint, use the domain name of the Amazon Managed Active Directory.

    For example, suppose that the domain name for your Amazon Managed Active Directory is corp.example.com. Then use the format PostgreSQL-endpoint.Amazon-Region.corp.example.com for the endpoint and put it in the /etc/hosts file.

    % echo " 34.210.197.118  PostgreSQL-endpoint.Amazon-Region.corp.example.com" >> /etc/hosts

  3. Use the following psql command to log in to a PostgreSQL DB instance that is integrated with Active Directory. 

    psql -U username@CORP.EXAMPLE.COM -p 5432 -h PostgreSQL-endpoint.Amazon-Region.rds.amazonaws.com postgres

    To log in to the PostgreSQL DB cluster from a Windows client using an on-premises Active Directory, use the following psql command with the domain name from the previous step (corp.example.com):

    psql -U username@CORP.EXAMPLE.COM -p 5432 -h PostgreSQL-endpoint.Amazon-Region.corp.example.com postgres