How do I test whether a newly created user can communicate with a PostgreSQL database?

My settings:

• Ubuntu 9.10
• PostgreSQL 8.4.2

I created a new user(jdoe) under my local PostgreSQL with the following command in the psql shell:

CREATE USER jdoe WITH PASSWORD 'password';

I also have created a new database called mydb. My goal is to give user jdoe full access to database mydb. I did a few things through the GUI pgAdmin III and after running \l in the psql shell, I get the following output:

                                    List of databases
Name     |  Owner   | Encoding |  Collation  |    Ctype    |   Access privileges
--------------+----------+----------+-------------+-------------+---------------
mydb     | jdoe     | UTF8     | en_CA.UTF-8 | en_CA.UTF-8 | =CTc/mydb
                                                           : hmart=CTc/mydb
postgres | postgres | UTF8     | en_CA.UTF-8 | en_CA.UTF-8 | 

Showing my list of users(\du), I get:

            List of roles
 Role name | Attributes  | Member of 
-----------+-------------+-----------
 jdoe      |             | {}
 postgres  | Superuser   | {}
           : Create role   
           : Create DB    

I can't really tell from the above if my goal has been achieved, but is there a way to test if the user jdoe can communicate with the database mydb? I'm testing it though Django's settings:

DATABASE_ENGINE = 'postgresql_psycopg2'           
DATABASE_NAME = 'mydb'      
DATABASE_USER = 'jdoe'       
DATABASE_PASSWORD = 'password'        
DATABASE_HOST = ''         
DATABASE_PORT = '' 

but I'm getting the following error after a python manage.py syncdb:

psycopg2.OperationalError: FATAL:  Ident authentication failed for user "jdoe"

I did all the above on Win XP with the latest PostgreSQL installer and everything work flawlessly with Django. I'm not sure what I'm missing under Ubuntu.