authentication failed starting psql

Question

After installing postgres, I tried to start psql on my VPS and got an authentication failure

~$ psql
Password: 
psql: FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "michael"

I went back to my install instructions, which had me set my password this way

sudo -u postgres psql template1
ALTER USER postgres with encrypted password 'your_password';

I tried to do that again but wasn't able to login:

 sudo -u postgres psql template1
Password: 
psql: FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "postgres"

I'm thinking that I either forgot the password, or, more likely, did this step wrong. The instructions told me, in sudo nano /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf, to change

local all postgres

to

local all postgres md5

so in the following code, I replaced both instances of peer with md5

# Database administrative login by Unix domain socket
local   all             postgres                                peer

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     peer

Is there a way that I can recover or change my password now that I'm locked out?

Update

when trying to login, authentication fails whether I use user postgres or michael

 sudo -u michael psql template
Password: 
psql: FATAL:  password authentication failed for user "michael"

Answer 1

Have you actually set passwords on these database accounts prior to enabling MD5 password authentication?

If you haven't set a password (or you have but you don't remember them) you can reset the passwords by setting the authentication type to trust in pg_hba.conf, logging in as your Postgres superuser account, and changing the passwords with the ALTER USER command.