running pgaccess on localhost

Hello, pgsql newbie here...

I'm trying to run pgaccess on a database I've created, and I get the
following error:

PostgreSQL error message: Connection to database failed
PQconnectPoll() -- connect() failed: Connection refused
Is the postmaster running (with -i) at 'localhost' and accepting
connections on TCP/IP port '5432'?

Now the postmaster is not normally set up with the -i option, and I'd like
to keep it that way since I'm intending to use my workstation for local
development only (are there any security issues by activating the -i
option?).  Indeed turning the -i option on does in fact allow me to use
pgaccess without error.

However, since I'm running pgaccess from a terminal window on my machine I
would have thought that this would constitute a local domain socket
connection (or at least a connection from the localhost), so I'm confused
by the error message -- am I missing something or do I really have to
enable TCP/IP connections if I want to initiate database access using
pgacess from a terminal window?

Mike

[running postgreSQL 7.0 on Linux-Mandrake with kernel 2.4.3]