MediaMan - Frequently Asked Questions for MediaMan Library

FAQ - MEDIAMAN LIBRARY SPECIFIC FEATURES

Frequently asked questions, quick answer to common problems

Question Index

How do I backup or transfer a PostgreSQL database.
What do I do if I forgot the administrator's password?

How do I backup or transfer a PostgreSQL database.
MediaMan Library doesn't currently have a backup mechanism. However, you can easily rely on pgAdmin III, the client program that comes with PostgreSQL server installation to backup and transfer. To do a backup, simply locate the MediaMan Library database in the object browser of pgAdmin (typically located under Servers/[Your Server Name]/Databases in the object browser), right click on it and choose "Backup ...". You will be prompted for options for a local compressed file to store. Alternatively, you can go deeper into Schemas/public/Tables in the object browser, and backup tables separately. You can use the compressed backup file to restore the database on another PostgreSQL server. To restore the backup, simply choose "Restore ..." when right clicking the database in object browser, and have your backup file ready.
What do I do if I forgot the administrator's password?
If you forgot the password for the PostgreSQL server. You'll need to temporarily disable password authentication and reset the password. To do this, open up pg_hba.conf in the data directory of PostgreSQL, for each line of authenticating method, change it from "md5" to "trust" (without quotes). Restart PostgreSQL, you will be able to log on as "postgres", the root user, without using a password from pgAdmin III. Use pgAdmin III to change the password for the user. After that, change the "trust" back to "md5" on pg_hba.conf and restart PostgreSQL.

If you forgot the master administrator ("admin") password in MediaMan Library. Please note that MediaMan Library stores the administrator password in one-way hashed format. It's impossible to recover the original password. However, this hashed password is stored in a table called "mediaman_properties", therefore, it's possible to reset the password by resetting the data in this table. To do this, first run a backup for each table using the method described above. After that, drop all tables. Connect the database server using MediaMan Library, and you will be prompted to initialize the database. Set a password at this time. After the initialization, quit MediaMan Library. Use pgAdmin III to restore all tables except "mediaman_properties".