Postgresql won't startup anymore

[GVN]

I've done something to my postgresql server (on Fedora Core 4 Linux)and I can't get it to startup now. I'm a novice to this application, so please go easy on me as I'm trying to learn it. I was running version 8.0, but went ahead and tried to upgrade to 8.2, thinking that a new installation would maybe overwrite whatever settings I screwed up and get me operational again. What I mean by "tried" is that I downloaded the binaries and ran them, and they acted like they installed, but when I do a 'psql -V' it still says 8.0.3. When I try to run the command 'psql' I get the error message:

psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

My postgresql directory is under /usr/local/pgsql. Is this an OK location to have it? The /usr/local/pgsql/data directory contains the pg_hba.conf and postgresql.conf files, among others. These files look unchanged from their default settings that came in the binaries. The /usr/local/pgsql and all subdirectories have the user postgres as their owner. When I su as user postgres and go to the directory /etc/rc5.d/ and run './S64postgresql status' it says 'postmaster is stopped'. When I run './S64postgresql start' it was saying:

cat: /var/lib/pgsql/data/PG_VERSION: Permission denied

An old version of the database format was found.
You need to upgrede the data format using PostgreSQL.
See /usr/share/doc/postgresql-8.0.3/README.rpm-dist for more information.

Any ideas or tips to try?

GVN

 

[stoolpigeon]

when you say you downloaded the binaries and ran them - what exactly did you do. which files did you download - from where - and where did you put them?

 

[GVN]

I finally got it working. It turns out that the /var/lib/pgsql directory and all subdirectories didn't have the user postgres as the owner of them as well...

Thanks anyways,

GVN