Postgres ignores passwords

I need to enable passwords for my database. I have set pg_hba.conf:

host links 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 password passwords

When I connect it will reject requests if the userid is not valid but doesn't give a poop about the password. What am I doing wrong? Also, it even allows UNIX userid's to connect (also without a correct password). This is really confusing since the docs explcitely state the UNIX userid's are seperate from the database userID's. I don't really care which set of ID's it lets connect as long as the password is validated. What's going on?

Thanks folks.

This post is a public service announcment for anyone else who can't figure this problem out. Here's the deal:

I had to use the pg_ctl executable to reload the PostgreSQL server. Try reading man pg_ctl for some info. I first ran it like this:

pg_ctl reload

(where 'reload' is the parameter passed in to tell the application to 'reload' the server's options (ie: the pg_hba.conf file)) When I ran this I got

"pg_ctl: no database directory or environment variable $PGDATA is specified"

Not knowing what PGDATA is but knowing where my pg_hba.conf file was I changed to that directory (mine is /var/lib/pgsql/data) and ran the command there with the other parameter:

pg_ctl reload -D .

Viola!!! It works! Now I can only connect to my database with a valid PostgreSQL userid (no unix ids allowed) and it validates the password too!!! Is that cool, or what? I love solving problems!