First Time Starting Up PostgreSQL and Having Problems

I've done a lot of Google searching and PostgreSQL archive searching and can't seem to figure out why I'm having problems.

This is a first time install of PostgreSQL version 11.3 on a CentOS server running release 7.6.1810. I've just finished setting up the postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf files and am trying to start up PostgreSQL for the first time. I'm getting errors no matter what I try. My first attempt resulted in errors that look like the following:

syntax error in file "/var/lib/pgsql/11/data/pg_hba.conf" line 84, near token "all"

I received this error for every configuration line that wasn't a comment. The "all" is in the USER column. No matter what I put in the USER column, I get the same error, but listing whatever string is in that column. I wandered if this error was just a result of a different error someplace else, so I commented out all lines in this file. That resulted in the following error:

FATAL: exceeded maxAllocatedDescs (16) while trying to open file "/var/lib/pgsql/11/data/pg_hba.conf"

I'm at a loss and don't know where to look next. Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Brent L. Bates - UNIX System Administrator Information Technology Department - Langley Federal Credit Union
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