Can't log into PostgreSQL database

Question

I created a user like this:

create user blog with password 'blog'; 

Then I made it the owner of a database:

alter database blog_development owner to blog; 

Then I tried to log in and it didn't work:

$ psql -d blog_development -U blog -W Password for user blog: psql: FATAL:  Ident authentication failed for user "blog" 

Any idea why?

One thing I've tried is editing pg_hba.conf

 76 # Database administrative login by UNIX sockets  77 local   all                postgres                          ident  78  79 # TYPE  DATABASE           USER        CIDR-ADDRESS          METHOD  80  81 # "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only  82 local   all                all                               ident  83 # IPv4 local connections:  84 host    all                all         127.0.0.1/32          md5  85 host    blog_development   blog        127.0.0.1/32          md5  86 # IPv6 local connections:  87 host    all                all         ::1/128               md5 

Line 85 is the one I added. I restarted PostgreSQL after that but it didn't seem to change anything.

Answer 1

I was just trying to connect in the wrong way. Here's the right way:

psql -h localhost -U blog -d blog_development 

Answer 2

psql uses a local socket by default (check out -h flag in man) - that should match line 82 when you log in.

82 local all all ident

ident needs a real user in the system to check the password against. So you can either connect by host or add an user so it matches you new config line.