PostgreSQL setup and use

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 00:43:22 -0600,
  Brad Pepers <bpepers at me.com> wrote:
>
> 2. So now I have it installed and I try to create a database using  
> createdb.  I'm logged in as bpepers and just do "createdb foo" on the  
> command line.  I get this error message:
>
> 	createdb: could not connect to database postgres: FATAL: Ident  
> authentication failed for user "bpepers"
>
> Anyone know why this is happening?  The pg_hba.conf is using "ident  
> sameuser" for local connections.  As far as I know this should allow the 
> postgresql server to authenticate that I'm me.  The PostgreSQL docs says 
> it uses SO_PEERCRED which should be supported on Linux.  Being able to 
> create a database for myself works on *every* other distribution I've 
> used (Mandriva, SuSE, RHEL, Ubuntu, ...) and without this it's pretty 
> useless.

Database users don't necessarily match up with OS users. You want to
run createuser as postgres. With the just ident sameuser, you need to
become root and then su to postgres. But if you change hba.conf you
can let other users connect to the database as postgres.

> The above issues make it very difficult to use PostgreSQL on Fedora Core 
> 10 and 11.  The first problem means a number of extra steps run as root 
> and the second seems to mean the user will have to edit PostgreSQL config 
> files in order to get things running.  If anyone knows of an easier way 
> to get this working or a solution to the ident authentication failing, 
> please let me know!  And if there is someone specifically to ask these 
> questions or make suggestions to the postgresql-server package install 
> process, let me know!

Databases are not exactly fire and forget things to use. There is very
good documentation available for postgres. Part of the documentation
covers setting up and admining a postgres server.