The problem turned out to be that I didn't know the command "gmake >&
make.log &" put the compile into the backround and the "[1] xxxx" message
was it's process no. Two people emailed me privately with that info. It
was compiling and I didn't know it so hadn't looked for a make.log file.
Am new to both Linux and Postgres.
I will keep in mind what you've said about permissions though. It
sounds important.
Perhaps the permissions problems Rich mentioned are related to the fact
that RedHat installs a default user named postgres whose home dir is
/var/lib/pgsql. Perhaps not.
Thanks to all who helped.
