ident inconsistency

ident authentication appears to work inconsistently between debian
stable (7.2.1) and the 7.2.3 postgresql I installed from source on a Red
Hat 7.3 machine.

Debian doesn't require I run an ident server.  My pg_hba.conf contains:

local all ident sameuser

On the installation I compiled myself, that doesn't work.  Instead I
must run an ident server, and do:

host all 127.0.0.1 0.0.0.0 ident sameuser

...which doesn't work on Debian.

(Additionally, the RH7.3 pidentd RPM returns an encrypted response by
default.  That needs to be turned off by editing /etc/pidentd.conf)

I know that at one time debian provided a 'peer' authentication
mechanism.  I thought that had been absorbed in the main distribution,
and renamed 'ident' to prevent confusion.

Personally, I prefer Debian's operation.  The only reason I'd use ident
authentication would be to authenticate on the local machine - in which
case running an ident server and connecting via localhost should be
unneccessary, no?

In any case, I think it would be nice if the config files worked in a
consistent fashion - either by adopting a single unified approach, or by
re-introducing the 'peer' keyword.

--
Ron Peterson                          -o)
Network & Systems Manager             /\\
Mount Holyoke College                _\_v
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~rpeterso   ----