Cant create new users or databases

Can someone point out to me what I am doing wrong here? I
can't seem to find this in the documentation anywhere.

[root@alphabyte abyte]# createuser abyte
Shall the new user be allowed to create databases? (y/n) y
Shall the new user be allowed to create more new users? (y/n) y
NOTICE:  mdopen: couldn't open /var/lib/pgsql/pg_shadow: Permission denied
NOTICE:  RelationIdBuildRelation: smgropen(pg_shadow): Permission denied
NOTICE:  mdopen: couldn't open /var/lib/pgsql/pg_shadow: Permission denied
NOTICE:  mdopen: couldn't open /var/lib/pgsql/pg_shadow: Permission denied
psql: FATAL 1:  cannot open relation pg_shadow
createuser: creation of user "abyte" failed

Ta

Alan
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