Problems with authentication

    Hi all,

         I changed the last two lines from my pg_hda.conf (
 "trust" to "crypt") in order to improve my security.
        I did the following after "su -l postgres"
        1-> createdb postgres
        2-> chmod 600 pg_pwd
        3-> psql
        4-> alter user postgres with password postgres_pw
        5-> \q
        6-> changed the file pg_hda.conf as described later
        7-> /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql restart

        After this when I try to use "psql -u -d postgres" or "psql -u",
it
 says that connection to database failed and failed authentication.
    My Postmaster starts OK with -S -i -p 5432....
    What can be happening?
         Thanks in advance,

         Orlando