Cannot drop PostgreSQL role. Error: `cannot be dropped because some objects depend on it`

I was trying to delete PostgreSQL user:

DROP USER ryan;

I received this error:

> Error in query: > ERROR: role "ryan" cannot be dropped because some objects depend on it > DETAIL: privileges for database mydatabase

I looked for a solution from these threads:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3023583/postgresql-how-to-quickly-drop-a-user-with-existing-privileges
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32988702/how-to-drop-user-in-postgres-if-it-has-depending-objects

Still have the same error.

This happens after I grant all permission to user "ryan" with:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE mydatabase ON SCHEMA public TO ryan;

DROP USER (or DROP ROLE, same thing) cannot proceed while the role still owns anything or has any granted privileges on other objects.

Get rid of all privileges with DROP OWNED (which isn't too obvious from the wording). The manual:

> [...] Any privileges granted to the given roles on objects in the current > database and on shared objects (databases, tablespaces) will also be revoked.

So the reliable sequence of commands to drop a role is:

REASSIGN OWNED BY ryan TO postgres;  -- or some other trusted role
DROP OWNED BY ryan;

Run both commands in every database of the same cluster where the role owns anything or has any privileges!
And finally:

DROP USER ryan;

• REASSIGN OWNED changes ownership for all objects currently owned by the role.
• DROP OWNED then only revokes privileges (ownerships out of the way).

Alternatively, you can skip REASSIGN OWNED. Then DROP OWNED will (also) drop all objects owned by the user. (Are you sure?!)

Related:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47997897/drop-a-role-with-privileges/47998115#47998115 _{(with a function to generate commands for all relevant DBs)}

• Find objects linked to a PostgreSQL role

What worked for me was to follow these steps:

1. Connecting to the database

\c mydatabase

2. Reassigning ownership

REASSIGN OWNED BY ryan TO <newuser>;

Or/and just deleting the object

DROP OWNED BY ryan;

3. Executing REVOKE PRIVILEGES

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public FROM ryan;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA public FROM ryan;
REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON ALL FUNCTIONS IN SCHEMA public FROM ryan;

4. Dropping the user

DROP USER ryan;

PS: You might not need to execute both Step 2 and 3, just one of the two steps might be usually enough.

What worked for me on RDS Postgres 13:

REVOKE ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE <my_db> FROM <my_user>;

I also had a similar error where the role was owner for tables so it couldn't be dropped, had to re-assign table owner with:

ALTER TABLE <my_table> OWNER TO <trusted_role>;

Doing a REASSIGN like this didn't work for me on RDS because AWS doesn't give you full superuser to your master user: REASSIGN OWNED BY <olduser> TO <newuser>;

What worked for me was to recreate template1 database and then drop some role:

$ psql -U postgres postgres
postgres=# update pg_database set datistemplate = false where datname='template1';
UPDATE 1
postgres=# drop database template1;
DROP DATABASE
postgres=# create database template1 template=template0;
CREATE DATABASE
postgres=# update pg_database set datistemplate = true where datname='template1';
UPDATE 1
postgres=# DROP ROLE test;
DROP ROLE