Run Postgres exposed to the internet

Although this is not recommended, there might be scenarios where there are no other options.

An example is an analysis software which doesn’t give the capability to connect via SSH. I came across this scenario when someone wanted to use QLik. Although this has a lot of capabilities, but when something like this is required, I’d rather use the open source and free Metabase.

Get Postgres config file location

From the postgres prompt.

postgres> psql -U postgres -c 'SHOW config_file

Modify the postgresql.conf file

From the above command the config file might be in –

/etc/postgresql/10/main/postgresql.conf

In this we modify the the following line

listen_addresses = '*'

Modify pg_hba.conf file

This is located in the same folder as the file above.

/etc/postgresql/10/main/pg_hba.conf

Add the following lines –

# IPv4 external connections:
host    all             all             0.0.0.0/0               md5

# IPv6 external connections:
host    all             all             ::/0                    md5

Restart Postgres

$> /etc/init.d/postgresql restart