Since I ran into the same problem, I thought I'd share at least a workaround:
As root, run /usr/bin/pg_createcluster -u postgres 8.3 main Then postgres should start with /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 start I assume the bug has something to do with /var/lib/dpkg/info/postgresql-8.3.postinst passing a non-empty second parameter to configure_version() in /usr/share/postgresql-common/maintscript-functions
