postgresql does not seem to respect the pg_hba.conf config - how can I diagnose this?
If you have restarted the database and the contents of the view pg_hba_file_rules doesn't match your pg_hba.conf file, then you probably have more than one such file, and edited the one which is not being used.  If you can connect via another means, you can use show hba_file; to get PostgreSQL to tell you which file is the one that is being used.