Magnus,
> However it would be nice to throw an error or at least a warning when parsing
> the file instead of pretending everything's ok. Perhaps authentication methods
> should have a function to check whether the method is supported which is
> called when the file is parsed.
>
The good way to solve this would be to have independant command line
utilities which check pg_hba.conf, pg_ident.conf and postgresql.conf for
errors. Then DBAs could run a check *before* restarting the server.
--Josh