Why connect to template1? It should be invisible. Create a user and a database for your webapp. Matching the unix account name is the simplest way to do that.

Why connect to template1? It should be invisible. Create a user and a database for your webapp. Matching the unix account name is the simplest way to do that. In pg_hba.conf, let unix users authenticate as matching PostgreSQL users: local all all peer The postgres user on Debian/Ubuntu can create users and databases: sudo -u postgres createuser -SRD webappuser sudo -u postgres createdb webappuser --owner=webappuser sudo -u webappuser psql