09:55

Running PostgreSQL on two ports

3 May 2023

Recently on one of the PostgreSQL mailing lists, someone wrote in asking if it was possible to get PostgreSQL to listen on two ports. The use case, to paraphrase, was that there was a heterogeneous mix of clients, some of which could connect with TLS, some of which couldn’t. They wanted the clients that could use TLS to do so, while allowing the non-TLS clients access.

The simple answer is: Upgrade your non-TLS clients already! But of course the world is a complicated place. And for reasons that weren’t given (but which we will accept for now), it has to be two different ports.

The PostgreSQL server itself can only listen on one port. But there were two options presented that could fix this:

1. Run pgbouncer with TLS turned on, on a different port, and have it forward the connections to the PostgreSQL server via a local socket.
2. Run stunnel to listen for TLS connections, and route those to PostgreSQL.

I don’t imagine many people will have this exact situation, but if you do… there are options!

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