Environment Variables

PostgreSQL 8.3.6 Documentation
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# 30.12. Environment Variables

The following environment variables can be used to select default connection parameter values, which will be used by `PQconnectdb`, `PQsetdbLogin` and `PQsetdb` if no value is directly specified by the calling code. These are useful to avoid hard-coding database connection information into simple client applications, for example.

- `PGHOST` sets the database server name. If this begins with a slash, it specifies Unix-domain communication rather than TCP/IP communication; the value is then the name of the directory in which the socket file is stored (in a default installation setup this would be `/tmp`).

- `PGHOSTADDR` specifies the numeric IP address of the database server. This can be set instead of or in addition to `PGHOST` to avoid DNS lookup overhead. See the documentation of these parameters, under `PQconnectdb` above, for details on their interaction.

  When neither `PGHOST` nor `PGHOSTADDR` is set, the default behavior is to connect using a local Unix-domain socket; or on machines without Unix-domain sockets, libpq will attempt to connect to `localhost`.

- `PGPORT` sets the TCP port number or Unix-domain socket file extension for communicating with the PostgreSQL server.

- `PGDATABASE` sets the PostgreSQL database name.

- `PGUSER` sets the user name used to connect to the database.

- `PGPASSWORD` sets the password used if the server demands password authentication. Use of this environment variable is not recommended for security reasons (some operating systems allow non-root users to see process environment variables via ps); instead consider using the `~/.pgpass` file (see Section 30.13).

- `PGPASSFILE` specifies the name of the password file to use for lookups. If not set, it defaults to `~/.pgpass` (see Section 30.13).

- `PGSERVICE` sets the service name to be looked up in `pg_service.conf`. This offers a shorthand way of setting all the parameters.

- `PGREALM` sets the Kerberos realm to use with PostgreSQL, if it is different from the local realm. If `PGREALM` is set, libpq applications will attempt authentication with servers for this realm and use separate ticket files to avoid conflicts with local ticket files. This environment variable is only used if Kerberos authentication is selected by the server.

- `PGOPTIONS` sets additional run-time options for the PostgreSQL server.

- `PGSSLMODE` determines whether and with what priority an SSL connection will be negotiated with the server. There are four modes: `disable` will attempt only an unencrypted SSL connection; `allow` will negotiate, trying first a non-SSL connection, then if that fails, trying an SSL connection; `prefer` (the default) will negotiate, trying first an SSL connection, then if that fails, trying a regular non-SSL connection; `require` will try only an SSL connection. If PostgreSQL is compiled without SSL support, using option `require` will cause an error, while options `allow` and `prefer` will be accepted but libpq will not in fact attempt an SSL connection.

- `PGREQUIRESSL` sets whether or not the connection must be made over SSL. If set to "1", libpq will refuse to connect if the server does not accept an SSL connection (equivalent to `sslmode` `prefer`). This option is deprecated in favor of the `sslmode` setting, and is only available if PostgreSQL is compiled with SSL support.

- `PGSSLKEY` specifies the hardware token that stores the secret key for the client certificate. The value of this variable should consist of a colon-separated engine name (engines are OpenSSL loadable modules) and an engine-specific key identifier. If this is not set, the secret key must be kept in a file.

- `PGKRBSRVNAME` sets the Kerberos service name to use when authenticating with Kerberos 5 or GSSAPI.

- `PGGSSLIB` sets the GSS library to use for GSSAPI authentication.

- `PGCONNECT_TIMEOUT` sets the maximum number of seconds that libpq will wait when attempting to connect to the PostgreSQL server. If unset or set to zero, libpq will wait indefinitely. It is not recommended to set the timeout to less than 2 seconds.

The following environment variables can be used to specify default behavior for each PostgreSQL session. (See also the ALTER USER and ALTER DATABASE commands for ways to set default behavior on a per-user or per-database basis.)

- `PGDATESTYLE` sets the default style of date/time representation. (Equivalent to `SET datestyle TO ...`.)

- `PGTZ` sets the default time zone. (Equivalent to `SET timezone TO ...`.)

- `PGCLIENTENCODING` sets the default client character set encoding. (Equivalent to `SET client_encoding TO ...`.)

- `PGGEQO` sets the default mode for the genetic query optimizer. (Equivalent to `SET geqo TO ...`.)

Refer to the SQL command SET for information on correct values for these environment variables.

The following environment variables determine internal behavior of libpq; they override compiled-in defaults.

- `PGSYSCONFDIR` sets the directory containing the `pg_service.conf` file.

- `PGLOCALEDIR` sets the directory containing the `locale` files for message internationalization.

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