Locked Out of Postgres After Password Change – Need Urgent Access to Data
gueirong
HOBBYOP

10 months ago

Hi Railway team/community,

I'm facing a critical issue with my Postgres database on Railway.

  • I changed the password for the postgres user using ALTER USER from inside the SQL shell.

  • After that, I updated my connection string with the new password.

  • However, all subsequent login attempts (via psql CLI or Railway variables) now fail with:

    pgsql

    FATAL: password authentication failed for user "postgres"

  • I have triple-checked the password and tried various combinations and encodings.

  • The Data tab in Railway no longer loads either, likely because it can't authenticate the user anymore.

  • This database contains important production data that I need to recover ASAP.

Can someone help me?

Happy to verify ownership of the project if needed.
Thanks so much in advance — this is really urgent.

Solved

1 Replies

brody
EMPLOYEE

10 months ago

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out about your Postgres database password issue. I understand this is causing disruption to your project.

Unfortunately, we do not offer password recovery services. When passwords are changed directly via SQL commands like ALTER USER, the new password is stored in an encrypted format that even our support team cannot retrieve.

Since you're on our Hobby plan, this type of urgent support falls outside the included service level. Our Hobby plan is designed for non-critical projects and comes with community-based support.

If you need further assistance, our community forum might have users who've encountered similar issues.

Best regards,

Railway Support Team

Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway • 10 months ago

Status changed to Solved brody • 10 months ago

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