When they did the reboot, the postmaster.pid file was not removed. This means the postmaster process didn't startup as usual.
First check to verify that postmaster isn't running:
$ps axww|grep post
if you don't see a process for postmaster with your data directory, then you need to remove the postmaster.pid file and try starting it again.
What I don't get is that you were following Bruno's instructions on Oracle. Are you installing both databases?
The problem with the Oracle install is that the startup files in /etc/rc.d/init.d/oracle8i shut Oracle down after sshd goes down, and also the websites are usually still running. If the webserver is still running, Oracle will never shut down. The local keyboard will already not work, and you can no longer log in via ssh to cure the error. The only thing you can do is to power cycle the machine.
So, how do you control the webserver to ensure it goes down before Oracle? Also, what are the links in /etc/rc.d/rc6.d that contain oracle8i and sshd?
If you use daemontools (svc) to shut down the webservers, I have an init.d script that does that first on shutdown of the server. I'll post some better instructions later today.
I also found bugs in the init.d scripts of listener8i and postgresql: both fail to create a lock file like the Oracle8i script, which means that the processes are not correctly stopped when you shutdown or reboot.
