Best Practice of running postgres in Ubuntu?

Question

I just installed postgresql in Ubuntu 18.04 and been going through the official guide. Things I understand:

• The installation comes with the default postgres user
• We should not create databases with this default user
• Instead we should create a different user

The questions I have are:

• Why is this so?
• Should the new user name I create be same as my ubuntu user $(whoami) ? Or should it be different ?
• Should this new user be a superuser ?
• When I have to delete or create databases/tables, do I have to log in to this newly created user or the default postgres user?

Answer 1

You should read the documentation, this is no substitute.

• It is ok to use the user postgres to create databases.

• Ideally there should be no remote connections with user postgres (block it in pg_hba.conf ).

• Never let an application connect as superuser.

• You should create other database users that are not superusers to create objects and work with them.

• The name of the database users has no connection to the name of your operating system users.

• For maximum safety, create objects with one user and let your application connect with a different user that has the required permissions on the objects.