psql: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "GuardDog_02"

Question

In postgresql 9.5.1, I created a user called GuardDog_02. I gave it a password. And I gave it permissions to create db and user:

CREATE USER GuardDog_02 WITH PASSWORD 'apple100' CREATEDB CREATEUSER;

Then under the GuardDog_02 system user (Mac OSX):

$ psql -d template1
Password: 
psql: FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "GuardDog_02"

I updated password just to make sure I typed it right:

template1=# ALTER USER GuardDog_02 WITH PASSWORD 'apple100';

Still it says password authentication fails. I checked the pg_hba.conf file too:

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     md5
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            md5
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 md5
# Allow replication connections from localhost, by a user with the
# replication privilege.
#local   replication     postgres                                md5
#host    replication     postgres        127.0.0.1/32            md5
#host    replication     postgres        ::1/128                 md5

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

When issuing CREATE USER GuardDog_02... the exact user name created is guardgog_02 because of SQL case folding. You may check that with \du in psql.

But according to that error message:

psql: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "GuardDog_02"

the username you're trying to log in with is GuardDog_02 (G,D in capital letters), which does not exist with this capitalization

To create that exact name, the identifier must be enclosed in double quotes, as in:

CREATE USER "GuardDog_02" WITH PASSWORD 'apple100' CREATEDB CREATEUSER;

Or, alternatively, if you don't want to recreate the user, log in with psql -U guarddog_02.