FATAL: could not access private key file “/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key”: Permission denied

Question

I believe I ended up mixing up permissions at /etc/ssl directories tree as the last modification was made on 18th November and a day after I could not get my PostgreSQL to work.

Answer 1

Try setting permissions on the .key file to 600. Postgres doesn't like key files with group or world permissions set. You may also need to change the owner to postgres, though I'm not sure about that.

Answer 2

Check the output of

$ sudo -u postgres
$ cd /etc/ssl/private
$ ls

If the response is "Permission denied" do

$ chown postgres:ssl-cert /etc/ssl/private/
$ chown postgres:postgres /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

Answer 3

Try adding postgres user to the group ssl-cert

Run the below code to fix your issue:

# > It happened to me and it turned out that I removed erroneously the postgres user from "ssl-cert" group, set it back with
sudo gpasswd -a postgres ssl-cert

# Fixed ownership and mode
sudo chown root:ssl-cert  /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
sudo chmod 740 /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

# now postgresql starts! (and install command doesn't fail anymore)
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql start

courtsey to GabLeRoux

Answer 4

I am running the postgres server in WSL, and I was facing the error with the ssl-cert file. I managed to make it work by changing the owner of the file to the postgres user I had created, adding the expected user and group IDs to the user as required of the application (111 and 116, respectively, as gleaned from helpful error messages), and voila, I have an active server from within WSL.

sudo useradd postgres
sudo usermod -u 111 -g 116 -a -G ssl-cert postgres
sudo chown postgres /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

After running the above, there were two more files the user running the server (postgres for me) needed permission to access, both residing in /var/postgresql. I used sudo chown -- twice more to give ownership to postgres. Running sudo service postgresql start will tell you which files you'll need to transfer ownership of through any error messages.

Answer 5

I was suffering from this issue when attempting to start Postgresql on a remote docker instance. I eventually tracked down the crazy solution here. Basically you have to recreate the directories, chown on it's own doesn't work:

mkdir /etc/ssl/private-copy; mv /etc/ssl/private/* /etc/ssl/private-copy/; rm -r /etc/ssl/private; mv /etc/ssl/private-copy /etc/ssl/private; chmod -R 0700 /etc/ssl/private; chown -R postgres /etc/ssl/private

Answer 6

Only thing that will work if you have changed permissions for /etc/ssl/private

mkdir /etc/ssl/private-copy; mv /etc/ssl/private/* /etc/ssl/private-copy/; rm -r /etc/ssl/private; mv /etc/ssl/private-copy /etc/ssl/private; chmod -R 0700 /etc/ssl/private; chown -R postgres /etc/ssl/private

Copy this whole command (It's a one line code).

If this doesn't work for you, ckeck your postgres user groups by groups postgres and make sure your postgres user have ssl-cert root postgres (Order doesn't matter).

Now lets check your file permissions on ssl/private :

$ ls -la /etc/ssl/
> drwx------   2 postgres root private

If this is not the output change your permissions with sudo chmod -R 700 /etc/ssl/private and for owners chown -R postgres:root /etc/ssl/private

//Now check permissions on ssl-cert-snakeoil.key, 
//which will be inside your **private** directory.
$ ls -la /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
> -rwx------ 1 postgres root /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key