Struggling to change default data location

Hi folks

Having a nightmare changing the default data location in 7.1

I uninstalled and re-installed 7.1 on RedHat 6.2 from the rpms with a
clean system. With the help of this list, I have set $PGDATA in my
shell config file and exported the value.

Postgres utilities such as initdb now recognise $PGDATA and I have
setup a system at my desired location.

initdb does not write a postmaster.opt file at the new location. On
system startup, it does write the .opt file to /var/lib/pgsql/data.
Editing this file with the new datapath does not change the behaviour
below.

At this stage - here is what I get...

$ /usr/bin/pg_ctl -D /www/dbdata -l logfile start
postmaster successfully started
$ pg_ctl status
pg_ctl: postmaster or postgres is not running
$ ps ax | grep postmaster
582 ? S 0:00 /usr/bin/postmaster -D /var/lib/pgsql/data

Please note:

- postmaster is running, but pg_ctl can't find it
- postmaster has started with the default datapath and is ignoring
$PGDATA

I get the same result if I launch automatically during startup.

Can anyone please help me make some sense of this? I am losing the
will to live...

Geoff Caplan