IDENT auth. problem

Hi All,

I am experiencing strange behaviour with psql. I normally log with
authentication type: ident sameuser

I have just exited from a psql session where I dropped a table and then
immediately logged back in and now I am getting: -

IDENT authentication failed for user 'postgres'

I have checked all the usual; ph_hba.conf, pg_shadow, restarting postmaster
with -i and environment variable PGHOST=localhost.

Does anyone have any ideas, similar probs or a way of tracing at what point
its failing.

Thanks in advance,

Graham.

PG Ver.  7.1.2
SuSE Linux 6.3