@kapa.ai airbyte losing DB connection due to authentication issue

Airbyte can lose its database connection due to authentication issues for several reasons, as evidenced by the knowledge sources: 1. Incorrect Credentials or Secrets: If the database username or password is incorrect, or if the Kubernetes secret containing these credentials is missing or misconfigured, Airbyte will fail to authenticate. For example, in a Helm deployment, the

airbyte-config-secrets

secret must be created with the correct

database-user

and

database-password

before installing Airbyte. If these are wrong or missing, authentication will fail and you may see errors like "FATAL: password authentication failed for user" in the logs. Double-check that your secrets are set up correctly and that the values match your database configuration. Also, ensure that the environment variables in your pods are correctly referencing these secrets and config maps [Github Issue: Cannot connect to External RDS instance](https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte/issues/48854). 2. Database Initialization Issues: If the database is uninitialized and a superuser password is not specified (for example, with PostgreSQL), Airbyte will not be able to connect. The logs may show errors such as "Database is uninitialized and superuser password is not specified." In Docker deployments, you must set the

POSTGRES_PASSWORD

environment variable to a non-empty value [Github Issue: failure to connect to airbyte-db postgresql](https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte/issues/54199). 3. Network or Security Group Issues: Sometimes, the problem is not with the credentials but with network access. For example, if the security group settings for an RDS instance are not configured to allow connections from the Airbyte deployment, authentication will fail even if the credentials are correct. Always verify that your database is accessible from your Airbyte environment [Github Issue: Cannot connect to External RDS instance](https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte/issues/48854). 4. Proxy or Middleware Authentication: If your deployment is behind a proxy that requires authentication and Airbyte is not configured to handle this, you may see failures related to proxy authentication. The logs may include messages like "Failed to authenticate with proxy" [Github Issue: Deployment Fails when proxy setting requires Authentication](https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte/issues/53227). 5. Database Permissions: Even if the connection is established, if the database user does not have the required permissions, Airbyte may lose the connection or fail to perform operations. For example, "Access denied for user" errors indicate that the user does not have sufficient privileges on the target database [Github Issue: Access denied for user 'airbyte'](https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte/issues/45597). Troubleshooting Steps: - Verify that your database credentials (username, password) are correct and up to date in your secrets/configuration. - Ensure the database is initialized and accessible from your Airbyte deployment. - Check network/firewall/security group settings to confirm connectivity. - Review logs for specific authentication errors to pinpoint the issue. - Make sure the database user has the necessary permissions for Airbyte operations. If you continue to experience issues, reviewing the Airbyte and database logs for authentication-related errors will help you identify the root cause.