Make sure PgBouncer is configured and running. Take a look at the Configuring PgBouncer safely recipe. Then, execute this at the command line to check for the service:

pgrep -lf pgbouncer

We should see a line similar to this:

21281 /usr/bin/pgbouncer -d /etc/pgbouncer/pgbouncer.ini

If this is not the case, we need help beyond the scope of this book. Feel free to check the PgBouncer mailing list for assistance. The community is willing to help too, so let them.

If our PostgreSQL server is on 192.168.56.30, we can connect to PgBouncer by using port 6432. With psql, we can connect to the postgres database through PgBouncer with this command:

psql -p 6432 -h 192.168.56.30 postgres

With PgAdmin, we will just change the connection settings to resemble this:

PgBouncer works like a simulated PostgreSQL server. Thus, any standard PostgreSQL client or driver should be fully compatible. The only difference is that the default port is 6432 instead of 5432. Effectively, this makes PgBouncer a connection proxy, and it can be treated as such.