Problems with new data location

Right after a new installation (7.1.1) and building my first table with the
data directory being the normal /usr/local/pgsql/data, I decided I wanted to
put my data directory on a different partition, for space reasons (room for
database growth) - I chose /var/pgdata.  At first I tried just copying the
whole data directory, but I got some sort of error (I don't remember it
now).  Then I tried creating /var/pgdata fresh and doing initdb -D
/var/pgdata, and that was okay until I tried to create the database again,
when it said a database of that name already existed.  Yes, I have changed
my startup script to reflect the new path.  The next thing I tried was to
change the name of /usr/local/pgsql/data to /usr/local/pgsql/data.old (to
hide it), erase the stuff in /var/pgdata, and then go through the initdb,
pg_ctl, createdb process again.  Now createdb complains:
   pgsql: Missing or erroneous pg_hba.conf file, see postmaster log for
details
   createdb: database creation failed
I have a perfectly good /var/pgdata/pg_hba.conf file.  Is it still looking
for stuff in /usr/local/pgsql/data?  How can I determine where it is
looking?  I don't where the "postmaster log" is - the log file I specify
with pg_ctl -l (/var/pgdata/serverlog) is not showing anything about this
(just one older error about a lock file).  What is the right way to move a
data directory or to start over with a new one? (It would be gravy to keep
my already created database, but starting over is no big deal - there is no
data in it yet.)

Thanks for your help.

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Karen Ellrick
S & C Technology, Inc.
1-21-35 Kusatsu-shinmachi
Hiroshima  733-0834  Japan
(from U.S. 011-81, from Japan 0) 82-293-2838
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