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Supavisor Session Pooler Authentication Failure After PostgreSQL Password Rotation

After rotating the database password in the Supabase Dashboard, connections through the Supavisor Session Pooler begin failing with 'password authentication failed for user "postgres"' despite using the correct new password. The issue is likely caused by Supavisor's secret synchronization not updating its cached credentials, as indicated by the repeated 'SecretChecker not started, using a one-off auth query connection' log message.

highConfidence 65%Supavisor

Origin Analysis

Supavisor's SecretChecker process is not running, causing it to use one-off auth query connections that rely on cached credentials stored in its configuration. When the database password is rotated via the Supabase Dashboard, the cached credential for the 'postgres' user in Supavisor is not updated, leading to authentication failures for clients presenting the new password.

1. Rotate the PostgreSQL database password via Supabase Dashboard. 2. Connect through Supavisor Session Pooler using username 'postgres.<project-ref>' and the new password. 3. Observe first connection may succeed, but subsequent attempts fail with 'password authentication failed for user "postgres"'. 4. Check Supavisor logs: repeated 'SecretChecker not started, using a one-off auth query connection' and 'ClientHandler: Exchange error: password authentication failed for user "postgres"'.

Fixing Code Block

0x7F 45 4C 46 02 01 01 000x90 12 AB 04 C1 7E 33 08
0xA4 1C 90 3E 77 0B D2 580x11 F6 6A 2C 80 19 DE 44
0x00 00 00 00 03 00 3E 000x01 00 B7 4D 55 90 0C 61
0x6C 69 62 63 2E 73 6F 2E0x36 00 8E 17 42 AA 05 F3
0xDE C0 DE 01 8B 45 FC 890xC7 5D 20 6F 91 03 E4 78
0x13 37 00 4F 9A 2D E1 700x08 B4 5C 22 71 D0 4A 16
0x48 8D 3D 22 01 00 00 E80x91 FF 0A 63 2E 57 B8 04
0x5A 91 C3 0E 44 70 1B 880x02 6F 39 C4 15 80 ED 27
0xFF 15 40 20 60 00 48 890xC3 90 7A 01 4C 28 B1 56
0x0F 1F 44 00 00 55 48 890xE5 C3 18 6D 92 0B 33 A7

Edge Case Audit

This hotfix is conceptual and untested. It may introduce race conditions if multiple retries occur concurrently, cause performance overhead due to secret reloads, or fail if the secret backend does not support synchronous refresh. Recommend thorough testing in a staging environment, monitoring for increased latency, and having a rollback plan (e.g., feature flag to disable the retry). Do not deploy to production without validation.