Troubles connecting PostgreSQL installed in WSL2 Ubuntu from the Windows 10 host

user_1602524 0
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I'm having big troubles connecting to PostgreSQL, installed in WSL2 Ubuntu, from the Windows 10 host.

Here is what I have done so far.

  1. Set password for postgres user.

  2. Set the following in pg_hpa.conf

    local all postgres md5

    host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5

  3. Set the following in postgresql.conf

    listen_addresses = '*'

  4. Tested successfully that I can connect with psql -U postgres - so password should be set correctly.

When I try to connect using either pgAdmin or psql from the Windows 10 host, I get the following error.

error: could not connect to server: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "postgres"

Anything else I can change in pg_hpa.conf or other PostgreSQL configurations which might help?

I'm thinking that I could have something to do with that WSL2 has its own IP, even tough that connections from the hosts are made appear coming from localhost. The connection seems to be made, but authentication failed for some reason when it is not made from within Ubuntu.

wsl-2 postgresql
2 Answers

I later tested with nc -l 5432 and for some reason, port 5432 didn't reach WSL2 on local host, but did on WSL-2 IP. If I use any other free port e.g. 5434 (free both on Windows and WSL-2) it works fine and I can connect to the PostgreSQL service on WSl-2 through localhost on windows.

I didn't change any options since the original posted question - only the port.

Update: It turns out that there indeed was a process from an old install of postgres on Windows which was listening on port 5432. This of cause explains it all. ..:/

user_16025240

As was pointed out by the original poster, ensure that you do not have a Windows service already running and listening on that port. In my case it was a PostgreSQL instance installed as a Windows service. Whatever the underlying networking support, it seems you can have a process/service listening on port 5432 in Windows as well as a separate Linux process listening on port 5432 from WSL2.

It was not enough to stop the Windows PostgreSQL service. Connecting from the Windows pgAdmin4 installation program failed. I also disabled the service from Microsoft Services console.

I needed to also stop and start the WSL2 postgresql. Only then was I successfully able to connect from my Windows pgAdmin4 installation program to the WSL2 postgreSQL

user_111149600
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