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(at)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
----------------------------------------------------