Re: Understanding the behaviour of hostname in psql

thanks for your prompt response Tom.

> Well, a connection to "localhost" will generally go to 127.0.0.1
> (*not* 127.0.1.1 --- that's just a typo from some hand hacking
> of your hosts file, I bet).  A connection to your host name will
> go to whatever the assigned "real" IP is (192.168.0.5 in your
> example).  If you don't have a stable assigned IP because you're
> using DHCP, the best advice would be to always write localhost
> and never bohr in your psql -h switch.
>
> This has nothing much to do with Postgres specifically --- it's a
> generic property of hostname lookup.

nice one, this makes perfect sense. so i cleaned up my hosts file and
my pg_hba.conf
file; also, i've restarted the machine just in case some caching is
happening somewhere.
unfortunately, the result is still not quite right:

    $ psql -h 127.0.0.1 -U marco -w --dbname sanzala
    psql (8.4.5)
    SSL connection (cipher: DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, bits: 256)
    Type "help" for help.

    [marco@127.0.0.1:5432 (12:04:40) sanzala ]$ \q

    $ psql -h localhost -U marco -w --dbname sanzala
    psql: fe_sendauth: no password supplied

    $ ping -c 1 localhost
    PING localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from localhost.localdomain (127.0.0.1): icmp_req=1 ttl=64
time=0.020 ms
    <snip>

    $ head -n3 /etc/hosts
    192.168.0.5    bohr    # Added by NetworkManager
    127.0.0.1    localhost.localdomain    localhost
    ::1    bohr    localhost6.localdomain6    localhost6

    $ grep /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf -B1 -e^host
    # IPv4 local connections:
    host    all         all         127.0.0.1/32          trust
    # IPv6 local connections:
    host    all         all         ::1/128               md5

not quite sure why i still get asked for a password when i login via
localhost...

cheers
--
The key to Understanding complicated things is to know what not to
look at, and what not to compute, and what not to think. -- Abelson &
Sussman, SICP

blog: http://mcraveiro.blogspot.com