Postgresql: password authentication failed for user “postgres”

Question

I have installed PostgreSQL 8.4, Postgres client and Pgadmin 3. Authentication failed for user \"postgres\" for both console client and Pgadmin. I have typed user as \"postg

Answer 1

This was frustrating, most of the above answers are correct but they fail to mention you have to restart the database service before the changes in the pg_hba.conf file will take affect.

so if you make the changes as mentioned above:

local all postgres ident

then restart as root ( on centos its something like service service postgresql-9.2 restart ) now you should be able to access the db as the user postgres

$psql
psql (9.2.4)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# 

Hope this adds info for new postgres users