Serial Field Autoincrementing

(Not sure which list to post this to, so I'm doing novice and php).

Using php, I create a table with a SERIAL field. In the same
script, the last thing I do is a COPY ... FROM ... USING DELIMITERS...to
load data I have outputted from another system into a text delimited
file. I didn't get the autoincrementing of the serial field to work, so
I modified my output-from-another-system program to "manually" set the
serial field value. That worked. However, it does not seem to have
done a default SETVAL. Do I do a "manual" SETVAL of 1 greater than the
highest value from the input text file, or am I missing something in the
create and copy process?

Jim Beckstrom