Red Hat Knowledgebase

Release Found: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3

Symptom:
The PostgreSQL service has been started. When clients attempt to connect to the server, they receive an error message similar to:

psql: could not connect to server: Connection refused
  Is the server running on host host.domain.com and accepting
  TCP/IP connections on port 5432?

Solution:
By default, the PostgreSQL service only allows connections to the database from the local machine. To enable clients to connect from different hosts, first add the following line to the bottom of the /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf file:

host    all    all   ip_address  subnet_mask  trust

replacing ip_address and subnet_mask to reflect the network IP address range of the clients.

Add the following line to the /var/lib/pgsql/postgresql.conf file:

tcpip_socket = true

Restart the service with:

# service rhdb restart

Clients should now be able to connect to the PostgreSQL service over the default port (5432).