initdb: pg_encoding failed

Hi.
I have a problem getting postgresql to work on my Debian 2.2 system, and
i hope someone in this group can help me.

I have successfully compiled, installed and used postgresql 7.02 on a
RedHat6.2 system.

The problem is the same for postgresql 7.02 and 7.03 on two different
computers, both running Debian 2.2, so think its either the distro or
me(most likly me, but i cant figure out what i'm doing wrong)!

What i wrote on all 4 tries:

./configure --enable-locale --enable-multibyte --with-odbc
make
make install

and everything seemed to go smooth.

The next thing i tried was:
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /var/pgsql/data
then i got this error:
---
initdb: pg_encoding failed

Perhaps you did not configure PostgreSQL for multibyte support or
the program was not successfully installed.
--

any suggestions???

Thanks

[Bad-Knees]