Guess what happend here:
[bertheau@dicaprio pg80]$ bin/pg_ctl -D data -l log start
postmaster starting
[bertheau@dicaprio pg80]$
No, postmaster was not starting - it was configured to listen on the
default port - and there was already another postmaster running on 5432.
This information was of course in the log file, but pg_ctl should have
said that the postmaster did not start successfully.
--
Markus Bertheau <twanger@bluetwanger.de>