postgresql installation

[Tom Allison <tallison@tacocat.net>]

OK, I'm just getting stuck on something regarding getting this postgresql 
started up.

For starters, there's no way I seem able to make a localhost tcp_ip connection.

postgresql.conf
tcpip_socket = true
port = 5432

pg_hba.conf
local   all         postgres                          ident sameuser
local   all         all                                             ident sameuser
host    all         all         127.0.0.1         255.255.255.255   md5
host    all         all         ::1 
ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff        md5


I went into the template1 database and set my password for my username so that I 
could make connections from localhost.  I'm not certain about this 'md5' thing. 
 I set the password to match "foo" and not the md5_hex version of "foo".  I'm 
assuming that this is not a problem...  But maybe it's a bad assumption.

So...  nothing really works.  pgAccess doesn't work.  and perl DBI doesn't work.

it's got to be simple.  But I don't know what it is and I'm reluctant to start 
tearing up all the configuration files thinking I actually know what I'm doing.

help?