'ident' doesn't work by default on any RPM disto.
It's not clear why the initdb wrapper for the rpm packages defaults to generating 'host' entries with 'ident' auth, but I think it's pretty unhelpful. At least if we used 'md5' the user could set passwords and have them actually work.
initdbcmd="$PGENGINE/initdb --pgdata='$PGDATA' --auth='ident'"
initdbcmd+=" $PGSETUP_INITDB_OPTIONS"
I know you can override it easily enough, but most people won't know to.