Stuck at the starting gate

I wiped out the RH packages for -7.2.1 and built/installed -7.3.2 from
source. Postmaster is running on the backend, but I cannot successfully add
me as a user nor run initdb. I'm looking at the 7.2 tutorial pdf and don't
see there where I went wrong. Here are some results:

[postgres(at)salmo /home/rshepard]$ createuser rshepard
Shall the new user be allowed to create databases? (y/n) y
Shall the new user be allowed to create more new users? (y/n) y
ERROR: 'autocommit' is not a valid option name
createuser: creation of user "rshepard" failed

[postgres(at)salmo /home/rshepard]$ initdb -D
/home/rshepard/development/paisley/
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user
"postgres".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale C.

creating directory /home/rshepard/development/paisley/... mkdir: cannot
create directory /home/rshepard/development/paisley': Permission denied

initdb failed.

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I had no problems with earlier versions so I'm rather at a loss here to
know what to do to get postgres up and running again.

Suggestions greatly appreciated,

Rich

Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President

Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
2404 SW 22nd Street | Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 | U.S.A.
+ 1 503-667-4517 (voice) | + 1 503-667-8863 (fax) | rshepard(at)appl-ecosys(dot)com
http://www.appl-ecosys.com/