This appears to be the createdb program itself crashing, not the server.
That cuts down the alternatives quite a lot, because createdb isn't
much; it basically just tries to connect via libpq and send a CREATE
DATABASE command to the server. My first thought is that you have a
corrupt libpq.so, or one that is incompatible with your createdb
executable. You could check some of the more obvious causes by
seeing what "file" and "otool -L" have to say about createdb and
libpq.so.
regards, tom lane
Would a potentially corrupt createdb program indicate that the download of
Postrgres was somehow corrupt? Can you download the checksum and verify that
your download is complete and undamaged?
No, it's highly unlikely to have compiled if it was corrupt. It's more likely something like an old version of libpq being used by createdb as Tom seems to imply.
Don, do any of the other commands work? e.g. psql? Or createuser?
createuser seems ok but psql is not recognized. I did a 'find' to locate the libpg.so but couldn't locate it. Could someone tell me where it is.