22 days ago
All the AI agent offers me is to delete all the data (thousands of data) and create a new database. It insists there's no other way. But I have clients, I have hundreds of courses on the platform!
I deployed a PostgreSQL database using the official Railway template postgres-ssl:18. The service crashed immediately with a catatonit initialization error—a well-known Docker image bug, NOT a user configuration issue.
When I attempted recovery by creating a new PostgreSQL service with a standard postgres:18-alpine image and remounting the original volume, the new instance cannot authenticate to the existing database because:
The old volume contains a database initialized with the same password
The new PostgreSQL service auto-generates a different password
This creates an irreconcilable password mismatch—FATAL: password authentication failed
The core problem: Railway's postgres-ssl:18 template image is broken and caused data to become inaccessible. I should not have to manually recover from a broken official template.
Current situation:
Production database with live user data is inaccessible
Dependent services cannot deploy
I have no way to reset the password or recover the data without Railway's intervention
What I need:
Immediate assistance recovering the data from the original volume
An explanation of why the official postgres-ssl:18 template is broken
A fix or replacement template that actually works.
I'm very afraid of losing all my data.
6 Replies
Status changed to Open Railway • 22 days ago
22 days ago
Try this:
- Disable all public networking on the database if you have any, as the following steps will disable user authentication
- SSH into your database service (right click your service and select
Copy SSH Command) - Run this command:
sed -i 's/host all all all scram-sha-256/host all all ::\/0 trust/' /var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata/pg_hba.conf(This will bypass user authentication) - Redeploy your database
- SSH again, and run the command
psql - Run
ALTER USER postgres with password '<PASSWORD>';where<PASSWORD>is the value of the variablePGPASSWORDin your Railway dashboard - Type
exit - Run
sed -i 's/host all all ::\/0 trust/host all all all scram-sha-256/' /var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata/pg_hba.conf(This will re-enable user authentication) - Redeploy your database
22 days ago
All the data is lost. Hundreds of courses and users. Thousands of euros spent on creation. I'm shocked. I was sure the railway had backups for this kind of thing.
22 days ago
Have you tried the steps I wrote above with the old volume attached to the new Postgres service?
0x5b62656e5d
Have you tried the steps I wrote above with the old volume attached to the new Postgres service?
22 days ago
But this won't help in my case - the problem is not the password, but that the tables don't exist.
0x5b62656e5d
You said you still have the original volume...?
22 days ago
When you lose your business due to an infrastructure error, it's time to change it. I needed Railway so I didn't have to worry about deployment and data security. In today's situation (I've already read the forums – it's a global problem), the only option is to simply change the infrastructure.