Ah... ok.
 In /var/lib/pgsql you will find a file called pgstartup.log
 Could you post here last lines of this file ?
 -----Original Message-----
From: Major Services <
services.major@gmail.com>
To: Iñigo Martinez Lasala <
imartinez@vectorsf.com>
Cc: 
pgsql-admin@postgresql.orgSubject: Re: [ADMIN] password authentication failed for user postgres
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 16:40:47 +0530
 But the server restart has failed; I am yet to make the changes suggested by you in the first instance.
 On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 4:32 PM, Iñigo Martinez Lasala <
imartinez@vectorsf.com> wrote: 
 Try with these parameters in pg_hba.conf. Perhaps your postgres-redhat compilation does not have ident enabled...
 local all postgres trust 
 -----Original Message-----
From: Major Services <services.major@gmail.com>
To: Iñigo Martinez Lasala <imartinez@vectorsf.com>
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] password authentication failed for user postgres
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 16:03:59 +0530
 Thank you for your message. But am in another problem now.
 In between I also tried to restart the server with 'service postgresql restart'
 It stopped the server, but then server start failed.
 Had restarted earlier also, without a problem.
 What should I do?
 On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 2:44 PM, Iñigo Martinez Lasala <imartinez@vectorsf.com> wrote:
 > In order to lauch createuser you don't need to modify listen_address since
 > you can use unix sockets. But anyway it's a requirement if you are goint to
 > access remotely.
 >
 > Add this line in first place to your pg_hba.conf
 > local   all         postgres                          ident sameuser
 >
 >
 > Reload postgresql and launch createuser as postgres user.
 >
 >
 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: Major Services <services.major@gmail.com>
 > To: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
 > Subject: [ADMIN] password authentication failed for user postgres
 > Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2010 14:13:10 +0530
 >
 > Hi,
 >
 > 1. I have added  listen_addresses = '*' ; in  postgresql.conf
 >
 > 2. And have made the following changes to pg_hba.conf
 >
 > local   DATABASE    USER   METHOD
 > local    samegroup      all      password
 > host    DATABASE    USER    CIDR-ADDRESS  METHOD  [OPTION]
 > host          all                 all       0.0.0.0/0             md5
 > hostssl      all                 all       0.0.0.0/0            md5
 >
 > 3. Have restarted the server
 >
 > 4. I can login to the server as user postgres.
 >
 > But  while trying to createuser I get the following message  :
 > 'createuser: could not connect to database postgres:  FATAL :
 > password authentication failed for user "postgres"
 >
 > This is on Redhat running Plesk also.
 >
 > I am new to Linux as well as PostgreSQL. Help would be much appreciated.
 >
 > Thanks
 > Viv
 >
 >
 >