I took the easy road out. Lazy me, huh? I uninstalled my non-functional postgresql by doing a:
rpm --erase --force --verbose postgres<*whatever*>
(I had a total of 6 postgres* modules...)
I started with a clean slate, and re-installed every postgres* module I had uninstalled in the right sequence so as to fulfill every module's dependency needs.
I then modified /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql and changed every PGDATA assignement to /home2/psql/mydbdatadir/... This worked fine. I could start the postmaster as root via /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql. My old database is still here, intact, and I find myself liking postgresql more and more each day. Sad thing of this chicken approach is, I won't know what happened. In the process of 'solving' this problem I learned about the importance of doing backup dumps in case something goes awry... pg_dumpall seems to be a pretty handy command which I'll put to use today.
