LC_COLLATE problem between linux distros

i have a problem. i needed to reinstall my system and decided to finally
tackle debian again (was redhat).  it went well, and now i'm setting
everything back up.  when i backed up the databases, i decided to simply
back the directory up for two reasons: 1) it was the same version of
pgsql on both, 2) i'm not sure what the definitive way of backing up
everything (included large fields) is, i know there are docs, but there
are so many options, and its confusing what to do.  i wish there was
just a 'backup this database fully with large everything and compress
it'  but you need to supply special parms for large objects, etc.

anyway, mea culpa there, no doubt.

now, i installed pgsql again, copied over the backed up database stuff,
and tried to restart.  i get this error:

FATAL 2:  The database cluster was initialized with LC_COLLATE 'en_US',
    which is not recognized by setlocale().
    It looks like you need to initdb.

seems pretty strange as i imagine that debian installs en_US as a locale
option.

any ideas as to whats wrong?  btw.  this is with pgsql 7.2.2 on debian,
installed from unstable branch.  i _think_ i might have had 7.2.1 on the
old redhat system, but i'm not sure.  anyway, given the error, i'm not
sure 7.2.1 would help.

--

    CraigL->Thx();
    Be Developer ID: 5852