no pg_hba.conf entry for host

This is in part a diary entry, since I'm no longer so enthused or optimistic
about getting this to work, or whether it's practical for me.

I reread some instructions I got on this list, and decided to give them a
try. I configured Windows for an ODBC connection, possibly correctly. From
the very start, it wasn't clear to me which user's account information
needed to be used and altered, the Owner's or postgres's. The file pg_hba
seemed to be configured to allow everything, according to the docs, so I
didn't change it, but I got the fatal "no pg_hba.config entry" error. Then I
tried creating a pg_hba.config file for the Owner's account, which I intend
to access the database from. After I rebooted, permission was denied for the
whole /var/postgresql/ folder for the user Owner, and I still got the fatal
error. Then I went to the postgres user's account and saw that my edits to
pg_hba.config weren't there, but I was able to edit the file, so I did. I
rebooted, and still got the fatal error from both accounts.

The only edit I made to /var/postgresql/ was to replace the "127.0.0.1" from
"host    all         all         127.0.0.1         255.255.255.255   trust"
with the IP address I saw in the error message. Maybe I needed to replace
the mask too, but the only mask I saw at the command line was a subnet mask
(255.255.255.0), not an IP-mask. In fact, I think there were two different
ones, along with two different IP Addresses. I used the one under "Ethernet
adapter local area connection." The other title and entries aren't there at
the moment for some reason.

Still seems like this should be easier. Since this is for a product I might
sell, I think I should be looking at something more commercial that includes
an installer to make it easier for others, even if I myself am masochistic.
More likely, I'll use flat files. Wouldn't be so bad for my purposes anyway.