No RTFMing The Obvious

After installing PostgreSQL with Kubuntu package manager, hope was that knowing the name of the database client program, the journey could start. But:

taimo@deficiency:~$ psql
psql: FATAL:  Ident authentication failed for user "taimo"

taimo@deficiency:~$ psql  --help
This is psql 8.3.7, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Usage:
  psql [OPTIONS]... [DBNAME [USERNAME]]

General options:
  -d DBNAME       specify database name to connect to (default: "taimo")
  -c COMMAND      run only single command (SQL or internal) and exit
  -f FILENAME     execute commands from file, then exit
  -1 ("one")      execute command file as a single transaction
  -l              list available databases, then exit

Heh. Database might just not exist. Will see.

taimo@deficiency:~$ psql  -l
psql: FATAL:  Ident authentication failed for user "taimo"

Hmm. Maybe this ident authentication thingy is all wrong?

taimo@deficiency:~$ ls /etc/postgresql/8.3/main/
environment  pg_hba.conf  pg_ident.conf  postgresql.conf  start.conf

That pg_ident.conf looked suspicious, but turned out to be empty, only noting that if ident user names coincide with PostgreSQL user names, this file is not needed. Instead special mapping 'sameuser' should be used in pg_hba.conf. And that file indeed seems to have the mapping. So what is wrong?

taimo@deficiency:~$ ls /usr/share/doc/postgresql-8.3/
changelog.Debian.gz  changelog.gz  copyright  README  README.Debian.gz

Ah. The Debian README has instructions for actually creating the database with createdb command. So the database is not even there yet!

taimo@deficiency:~$ man createdb

Normally, the database user who executes this command becomes the owner of the new database.

taimo@deficiency:~$ createdb
createdb: could not connect to database postgres: FATAL:  Ident authentication failed for user "taimo"

Ah. Misread the instructions. First switch to postgres had to be done, then the PostgreSQL user with desired name and rights created, including database creation rights.

taimo@deficiency:~$ sudo -u postgres sh
[sudo] password for taimo:
$ createuser -drS taimo
$ exit
taimo@deficiency:~$ createdb

taimo@deficiency:~$ psql
Welcome to psql 8.3.7, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
       \h for help with SQL commands
       \? for help with psql commands
       \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
       \q to quit

Yay! Seamless ident auth after creating the db user.