Bsrgvty

I need to access a postgresql database from a remote machine on a VPS at DigitalOcean running 12.10 and postgresql 9.1.

How do I do this? I noticed port 5432 is closed, how do I open this?

To open the port 5432 edit your /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/postgresql.conf and change

listen_addresses='localhost'

to

listen_addresses='*'

and restart your DBMS

invoke-rc.d postgresql restart

now you can connect with

$ psql -h hostname -U username -d database

if you are unable to authentify yourself, then you need to give your user access rights to your database

Edit your

/etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf

and add

host all all all md5

(This is for a wide open access. For stricter control, consult the pg_hba.conf documentation and adjust according to your needs).

Hereafter you need also a reload

invoke-rc.d postgresql reload

I don't need to mention that this is a basic configuration, now you should think about modify your firewall and improve the security of your DBMS.

This does not work anymore, if it ever did :

host all all * md5

The correct possible lines for this are :

host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5 #ipv4 range

host all all ::0/0 md5 #ipv6 range

host all all all md5 #all ip

Source

For the message "server not listening", that happen to me was, that i don't erase of # on the archive postgresql.conf
i mean:

#listen_addresses='localhost'

to:

listen_addresses='*'

(Sorry for my english).

The highest-voted and accepted answer has serious security-impolications. This method is disabled by default for good reasons.

Better use local port forwarding with ssh:

ssh -L local_port:localhost:foreign_port user@server

Start the port forwarding:

ssh -L 5432:localhost:5432 user@your-server.com
#or
ssh -L 5432:127.0.0.1:5432 user@your-server.com

(Change local and foreign ports to fit your configuration).

Then you can directly connect to the database from your local computer:

psql -U db_user -p local_port -l