Postgres - trouble starting the database on a suse 7.0 box - data dir not found

Hi!

I'm looking for a little help on starting Postgres on my SuSE 7.0 box. I've
installed all the relevant rpm's, but suse.config is having trouble accessing
the data dir of postgres (var/lib/pgsql/data) for configuration of the database
dir: I have found this in my var/log/messages :
/var/log/messages:8349:Mar 18 09:58:19 Yoda yast[1568]: Initializing the PostgreSQL database for location ~postgres/data ... -su: initlog: Permission denied
BTW: A textfile with relevant messages from var/log/messages are included with
this message.

I have - I must admitt - messed around a bit to try to sett the data dir
(PGDATA) variable. Now it is set to: root(at)Yoda:/home/larsf > echo $PGDATA
/var/lib/pgsql/data .

Trying to connect to a database with psql gives this result:
postgres(at)Yoda:/home/larsf > psql
psql: connectDBStart() -- connect() failed: Connection refused
Is the postmaster running at 'localhost'
and accepting connections on Unix socket '5432'?

I have searched the SuSE support database; and I found an old artickle dealing
with the lack of package pg_datab.rpm; but this seems to not be any part of the
distro today; at least a search in yast1 gives no such package.

Where do I go now; hints and tips are werry much apreciated as I am now at the
end of my limited knowledge on this matter.

Regards
Lars Forseth