Follow-up to original post, more information:

I tried again with some more debugging enabled and I get this dump in my
logs.

-davidu


--- what I think is "bad" output ---

2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  open of
/var/lib/postgres/data/pg_xlog/0000000000000000 (log file 0, segment 0)
failed: No such file or directory
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  invalid primary checkpoint record
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  open of
/var/lib/postgres/data/pg_xlog/0000000000000000 (log file 0, segment 0)
failed: No such file or directory
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  invalid secondary checkpoint record
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   FATAL 2:  unable to locate a valid checkpoint
record

--- complete output ---

/usr/lib/postgresql/bin/postmaster: PostmasterMain: initial environ dump:
-----------------------------------------
        PWD=/var/lib/postgres
        HZ=100
        USER=postgres
        MAIL=/var/mail/postgres
        LOGNAME=postgres
        SHLVL=3
        SHELL=/bin/sh
        PGLIB=/usr/lib/postgresql
        TERM=xterm
        HOME=/var/lib/postgres
        PGDATA=/var/lib/postgres/data
        PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/lib/postgresql/bin
        PGDATESTYLE=ISO,European
        _=/usr/lib/postgresql/bin/postmaster
-----------------------------------------
FindExec: found "/usr/lib/postgresql/bin/postgres" using argv[0]
invoking IpcMemoryCreate(size=127549440)
FindExec: found "/usr/lib/postgresql/bin/postmaster" using argv[0]
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  database system shutdown was
interrupted at 2004-04-29 11:41:26 UTC
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  open of
/var/lib/postgres/data/pg_xlog/0000000000000000 (log file 0, segment 0)
failed: No such file or directory
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  invalid primary checkpoint record
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  open of
/var/lib/postgres/data/pg_xlog/0000000000000000 (log file 0, segment 0)
failed: No such file or directory
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  invalid secondary checkpoint record
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   FATAL 2:  unable to locate a valid checkpoint
record
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  proc_exit(2)
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  shmem_exit(2)
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [9307]   DEBUG:  exit(2)
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [12241]  DEBUG:  reaping dead processes
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [12241]  DEBUG:  startup process (pid 9307) exited
with exit code 2
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [12241]  DEBUG:  aborting startup due to startup
process failure
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [12241]  DEBUG:  proc_exit(1)
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [12241]  DEBUG:  shmem_exit(1)
2004-04-29 11:41:32 [12241]  DEBUG:  exit(1)
root@sulinux:/var/lib/postgres#

--- end complete output ---

Where to go from here?


----------------------------------------------------
  David A. Ulevitch - Founder, EveryDNS.Net
  Washington University in St. Louis
  http://david.ulevitch.com -- http://everydns.net
----------------------------------------------------