Authentication failures and related problems generally manifest themselves through error messages like the following:
This is what you are most likely to get if you succeed in contacting the server, but it does not want to talk to you. As the message suggests, the server refused the connection request because it found no matching entry in its pg_hba.conf configuration file.
Messages like this indicate that you contacted the server, and it is willing to talk to you, but not until you pass the authorization method specified in the pg_hba.conf file. Check the password you are providing, or check your Kerberos or ident software if the complaint mentions one of those authentication types.
The indicated database user name was not found.
The database you are trying to connect to does not exist. Note that if you do not specify a database name, it defaults to the database user name, which might or might not be the right thing.