Do you have a PG 7.0 OpenACS installation? I guarantee that things like "sysdate()" are not pre-defined in PG 7.1.
My guess is that your PG environment variables are set up to /usr/local/pgsql (where PG is installed if you build from sources) rather than wherever it is placed by the RPMs (I know it's not there but forget exactly where it they're put).
You need to set your environment variables correctly, do an initdb, start the postmaster, do a createdb etc etc etc.
