Okay - we just discovered a simple "hack" for getting this problem set right. After some more digging on the OpenACS web site itself, a message here:
https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=31016
indicated that one needs to execute
psql -f postgresql.sql
The status at the moment is that file storage is work just fine as it was working earlier. :)
Thanks a lot!
cheers,
Abhas.