Enable remote access to PostgreSQL database server

Often it's good to access databases directly from desktop. Or maybe you want your database server to be different from your application server. Whatever your reason is, the requirement is enabling remote access to your PostgreSQL database server.

It's very simple procedure. First locate your DB configuration files. Commonly they lives under [inline-code]/etc/postgresql/9.3/main/[/inline-code] directory. Be sure to replace '9.3' with your own database version.

Now open up the file [inline-code]pg_hba.conf[/inline-code] with your favorite text editor and paste the bellow code at the end of the file:
[code type=bash]host all all 0.0.0.0/0 md5[/code]
Okay, Attention first: this will open up your server to the whole world. You can alter the above code to meet your specific need. Like replace the first 'all' with your single database name or replace second 'all' with your database user name. Also you can limit the network at the 4th column. Just tweak it as you need. It'll be more secure.

Next open up [inline-code]postgresql.conf[/inline-code] and change the value of [inline-code]listenaddresses = 'localhost'[/inline-code] to something like this:
[code type=bash]listenaddresses = '*'[/code]
Now PostgreSQL will listen to the whole network.

Simply restart your server:
[code type=bash]sudo service postgresql restart[/code]

You should be good to go by now!

Test your setup:
[code type=bash]psql -h server.ip -U postgres[/code]