Why did you restart the server? You can just send SIGHUP to have it reload the file without restarting.

Actually, I wasn't restarting the server. The pain was reloading that file, as it would break work that other people were doing at the time. I'm looking into whether modifying the postgresql.conf file from a query line will let us do what we were having a need to do.

Hah! Because I'm self-taught, and I didn't know I could.

Appreciate it!

There's a number of options that you can change in postgresql without having to restart the whole server.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/auth-pg-hba-conf.h... explains that you can just do a reload after changing pg_hba.conf.

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/config-setting.htm... explains more.

thanks much, digging through both.

Make sure to have your backup routine archive the custom config file.