Create a "postgres" user, and set up all the environment variables such as PATH, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH, then run createuser this way.

Make sure postmaster is not running as root. In fact i think postgres checks to see if a root account is trying to run it, and wont allow it.

It's pretty easy to whip up a script to execute postgres at startup as well, and saves starting it manually each time.

If youre using it for a web application, can i also recommend using the CGI::Application/HTML::Template framework. It provides a nice structur for the applications you write. I guess down the track you'd want to look at mod_perl as well. It loads everything into memory, so your script only has to load once, not every time its called.