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💻 Software🗄️ Databases

Also Add Password Changing Guidelines

Freshabout 1 month ago
Mar 14, 20260 views
Confidence Score80%
80%

Problem

Improve documentation Link https://supabase.com/docs/guides/self-hosting/docker Describe the problem When password is changed like for postgres in .env , It causes an error when started again `docker compose up -d` , there is no mention of fixing that or any passwd changing guidelines. Describe the improvement After many hours i found out you need to `docker compose down -v` and also `rm -rf volumes/db/data/` sometimes. Then `docker compose up -d` to change it without error.

Error Output

error when started again `docker compose up -d` , there is no mention of fixing that or any passwd changing guidelines.

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1 Fix

Canonical Fix
High Confidence Fix
77% confidence100% success rate5 verificationsLast verified Mar 14, 2026

Solution: Also Add Password Changing Guidelines

Low Risk

I'm able to repro the error. If I changed `POSTGRES_PASSWORD` in `.env` only, running `docker compose up -d` won't start up docker, since supabase_analytics will fail with the `password authentication failed for user "supabase_admin"` error above. This would prevent me from accessing the dashboard and other services, unless I remove the database `rm -rf volumes/db/data/`. It makes sense because th

77

Trust Score

5 verifications

100% success
  1. 1

    I'm able to repro the error. If I changed `POSTGRES_PASSWORD` in `.env` only, ru

    I'm able to repro the error. If I changed `POSTGRES_PASSWORD` in `.env` only, running `docker compose up -d` won't start up docker, since supabase_analytics will fail with the `password authentication failed for user "supabase_admin"` error above. This would prevent me from accessing the dashboard and other services, unless I remove the database `rm -rf volumes/db/data/`. It makes sense because the database `postgres` is created `supabase_admin` having the initial password. Trying to change password in `.env` won't change the role's password in the database.

  2. 2

    So, I tried changing `supabase_admin` password directly (as well as `postgres` r

    [code block]

  3. 3

    The reason why this only "somewhat" works is because the error still appears in

    The reason why this only "somewhat" works is because the error still appears in the supabase_anlytics logs. But, it appears less (though, still frequent), and you could access other services (at least the dashboard since that's the only thing i tested). I've yet to find a way to cleanly change password :(

Validation

Resolved in supabase/supabase GitHub issue #22605. Community reactions: 9 upvotes.

Verification Summary

Worked: 5
Partial: 1
Last verified Mar 14, 2026

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Environment

Submitted by

AC

Alex Chen

2450 rep

Tags

supabasepostgresqlbackenddocumentationenhancementself-hosted