ERROR: permission denied for sequence cities_id_seq using Postgres

Question

I ran following sql script on my database:

create table cities (
id serial primary key,
name text not null
);

create table reports (
id serial primary key,
cityid integer not null references cities(id),
reportdate date not null,
reporttext text not null
);

create user www with password 'www';

grant select on cities to www;
grant insert on cities to www;
grant delete on cities to www;

grant select on reports to www;
grant insert on reports to www;
grant delete on reports to www;

grant select on cities_id_seq to www;
grant insert on cities_id_seq to www;
grant delete on cities_id_seq to www;

grant select on reports_id_seq to www;
grant insert on reports_id_seq to www;
grant delete on reports_id_seq to www;

When, as the user www, trying to:

insert into cities (name) values ('London');

I get the following error:

ERROR: permission denied for sequence cities_id_seq

I get that the problem lies with the serial type. That's why I grant select, insert and delete rights for the *_id_seq to www. Yet this does not fix my problem. What am I missing?

Answer 1

Since PostgreSQL 8.2 you have to use:

GRANT USAGE, SELECT ON SEQUENCE cities_id_seq TO www;

GRANT USAGE - For sequences, this privilege allows the use of the currval and nextval functions.

Also as pointed out by @epic_fil in the comments you can grant permissions to all the sequences in the schema with:

GRANT USAGE, SELECT ON ALL SEQUENCES IN SCHEMA public TO www;

Note: Don't forget to choose the database (\c <database_name>) before executing the privilege grant commands