postgres startup failure

Hi,
I'm attempting to start postgres on a standby machine from a backup. Both
the primary and standby are running postgres 8.4, fedora 12.

The backup on the primary is done nightly using the following commands:

# psql -d operations -U postgres -c "SELECT
pg_start_backup('/data/postgres')";
# tar zcvf /mnt/thresheresc/postgres/backup.tar.gz /data/postgres/ --exclude
"/data/postgres/pg_xlog";
# psql -d operations -U postgres -c "SELECT pg_stop_backup()";

I also have WAL enabled on the primary and writing to the standby but it
doesn't seem to make a difference whether I'm using recovery.conf or not so
I have left that step out of the equation for now while I figure out why the
plain backup doesn't work.

After extracting the backup onto the standby machine and verifying the
correct postgres user permissions it refuses to start.

-bash-4.0$ postgres -d 3 -D /data/postgres/
DEBUG: postgres: PostmasterMain: initial environ dump:
DEBUG: -----------------------------------------
DEBUG: HOSTNAME=xxx.xxx.xxx
DEBUG: SHELL=/bin/bash
DEBUG: TERM=xterm
DEBUG: HISTSIZE=1000
DEBUG: USER=postgres
DEBUG:
LS_COLORS=rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:mh=00:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:mi=01;05;37;41:su=37;41:sg=30;43:ca=30;41:tw=30;42:ow=34;42:st=37;44:ex=01;32:*.tar=01;31:*.tgz=01;31:*.arj=01;31:*.taz=01;31:*.lzh=01;31:*.lzma=01;31:*.tlz=01;31:*.txz=01;31:*.zip=01;31:*.z=01;31:*.Z=01;31:*.dz=01;31:*.gz=01;31:*.lz=01;31:*.xz=01;31:*.bz2=01;31:*.tbz=01;31:*.tbz2=01;31:*.bz=01;31:*.tz=01;31:*.deb=01;31:*.rpm=01;31:*.jar=01;31:*.rar=01;31:*.ace=01;31:*.zoo=01;31:*.cpio=01;31:*.7z=01;31:*.rz=01;31:*.jpg=01;35:*.jpeg=01;35:*.gif=01;35:*.bmp=01;35:*.pbm=01;35:*.pgm=01;35:*.ppm=01;35:*.tga=01;35:*.xbm=01;35:*.xpm=01;35:*.tif=01;35:*.tiff=01;35:*.png=01;35:*.svg=01;35:*.svgz=01;35:*.mng=01;35:*.pcx=01;35:*.mov=01;35:*.mpg=01;35:*.mpeg=01;35:*.m2v=01;35:*.mkv=01;35:*.ogm=01;35:*.mp4=01;35:*.m4v=01;35:*.mp4v=01;35:*.vob=01;35:*.qt=01;35:*.nuv=01;35:*.wmv=01;35:*.asf=01;35:*.rm=01;35:*.rmvb=01;35:*.flc=01;35:*.avi=01;35:*.fli=01;35:*.flv=01;35:*.gl=01;35:*.dl=01;35:*.xcf=01;35:*.xwd=01;35:*.yuv=01;35:*.cgm=01;35:*.emf=01;35:*.axv=01;35:*.anx=01;35:*.ogv=01;35:*.ogx=01;35:*.aac=01;36:*.au=01;36:*.flac=01;36:*.mid=01;36:*.midi=01;36:*.mka=01;36:*.mp3=01;36:*.mpc=01;36:*.ogg=01;36:*.ra=01;36:*.wav=01;36:*.axa=01;36:*.oga=01;36:*.spx=01;36:*.xspf=01;36:
DEBUG: MAIL=/var/spool/mail/postgres
DEBUG:
PATH=/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
DEBUG: PWD=/var/lib/pgsql
DEBUG: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
DEBUG: SSH_ASKPASS=/usr/libexec/openssh/gnome-ssh-askpass
DEBUG: HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth
DEBUG: SHLVL=1
DEBUG: HOME=/var/lib/pgsql
DEBUG: LOGNAME=postgres
DEBUG: PGDATA=/data/postgres
DEBUG: LESSOPEN=|/usr/bin/lesspipe.sh %s
DEBUG: G_BROKEN_FILENAMES=1
DEBUG: _=/usr/bin/postgres
DEBUG: PGLOCALEDIR=/usr/share/locale
DEBUG: PGSYSCONFDIR=/etc/sysconfig/pgsql
DEBUG: LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8
DEBUG: LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
DEBUG: LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
DEBUG: LC_MONETARY=C
DEBUG: LC_NUMERIC=C
DEBUG: LC_TIME=C
DEBUG: -----------------------------------------
DEBUG: invoking IpcMemoryCreate(size=32595968)
DEBUG: max_safe_fds = 984, usable_fds = 1000, already_open = 6
DEBUG: logger shutting down
DEBUG: shmem_exit(0): 0 callbacks to make
DEBUG: proc_exit(0): 0 callbacks to make
DEBUG: exit(0)
DEBUG: shmem_exit(-1): 0 callbacks to make
DEBUG: proc_exit(-1): 0 callbacks to make

There is nothing in the pgstartup.log file... If I initdb on an empty
/data/postgres directory it starts up fine. I just can't start the database
using the backup.

Anybody have a clue what is going on here? The memory messages seem
suspicious to me...

Thank you,
Matt