pg_get_serial_sequence Strangeness/Unreliable?

Hello everyone,

I'm using "PostgreSQL 8.2.5 on amd64-portbld-freebsd6.1, compiled by
GCC cc (GCC) 3.4.4 [FreeBSD] 20050518"

The issue, is that when I run pg_get_serial_sequence on a particular
table/column it returns NULL.

Here are my tests:

simplyas_associations=> \d news_status
Table "public.news_status"
Column | Type |
Modifiers
---------------+-----------------------
+------------------------------------------------------------
status_id | integer | not null default
nextval('status_status_id_seq'::regclass)
newsletter_id | integer | not null
status | boolean | not null
indate | character varying(15) | not null
Indexes:
"status_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree (status_id)
"status_newsletter_id" btree (newsletter_id)

simplyas_associations=> select
pg_get_serial_sequence('news_status','status_id');
pg_get_serial_sequence
------------------------

(1 row)

So, for fun I added a new column to this table , and ran
pg_get_serial_sequence there

simplyas_associations=> alter table news_status add column test_id
serial;
NOTICE: ALTER TABLE will create implicit sequence
"news_status_test_id_seq" for serial column "news_status.test_id"
ALTER TABLE
simplyas_associations=> select
pg_get_serial_sequence('news_status','test_id');
pg_get_serial_sequence
--------------------------------
public.news_status_test_id_seq
------------------------

(1 row)

So my new column works. The only next step I could think of was to
compare my 2 sequences with \d, turns out their attributes are both
identical.

Ideas?

Thanks

Jeff MacDonald