thanks to Neophytos for his help.
He helped me get the openfts installed and running again. Ended up installing a /etc/shell-mods.sh script which contained the following:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/bin
export PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/lib
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
and reinstalled openacs and reran the installation.
He also helped me point out my "run" script had nsd-postgres instead of "nsd"
