After getting slony to run succesfully on one server with simply two 
local databases as master and slave, the other one appears to be more of 
a challenge.

This is my slonik-invoking shell script:

---
#!/bin/sh

# Location of pgsql and Slony-I binaries
PGBIN=/usr/local/pgsql/bin
# Name of our cluster
CLUSTER=tksync
# Master DB
MASTERDBNAME=syncm
# Slave DB
SLAVEDBNAME=syncs
# Master password
MPASSWORD=xxxxxx
# Slave pass
SPASSWORD=xxxxxx
# Primary host
MASTERHOST="127.0.0.1"
SLAVEHOST="127.0.0.1"
# user
REPLICATIONUSER=slony

PATH=$PGBIN:$PATH


slonik <<_EOF_
# Define the namespace the replication system uses
cluster name = $CLUSTER;

  #--
  # admin conninfo's are used by slonik to connect to the nodes one for each
  # node on each side of the cluster, the syntax is that of PQconnectdb in
  # the C-API
  # --
  node 1 admin conninfo = 'dbname=$MASTERDBNAME host=$MASTERHOST 
user=$REPLICATIONUSER password=$MPASSWORD';
  node 2 admin conninfo = 'dbname=$SLAVEDBNAME host=$SLAVEHOST 
user=$REPLICATIONUSER password=$SPASSWORD';

  #--
  # init the first node.  Its id MUST be 1.  This creates the schema
  # _$CLUSTER containing all replication system specific database
  # objects.

  #--
  init cluster ( id=1, comment = 'Master Node');

  #--
  # Because the history table does not have a primary key or other unique
  # constraint that could be used to identify a row, we need to add one.
  # The following command adds a bigint column named
  # _Slony-I_$CLUSTER_rowID to the table.  It will have a default value
  # of nextval('_$CLUSTER.s1_rowid_seq'), and have UNIQUE and NOT NULL
  # constraints applied.  All existing rows will be initialized with a
  # number
  #--
#  table add key (node id = 1, fully qualified name = 'public.poeppie');

  #--
  # Slony-I organizes tables into sets.  The smallest unit a node can
  # subscribe is a set.  The following commands create one set containing
  # all 4 pgbench tables.  The master or origin of the set is node 1.
  #--
  create set (id=1, origin=1, comment='All synctest tables');

  set add table (set id=1, origin=1, id=1, fully qualified name = 
'public.poeppie', comment='poeppie');
#  set add table (set id=1, origin=1, id=2, fully qualified name = 
'public.branches', comment='branches table');
#  set add table (set id=1, origin=1, id=3, fully qualified name = 
'public.tellers', comment='tellers table');
#  set add table (set id=1, origin=1, id=4, fully qualified name = 
'public.history', comment='history table', key = serial);

#  set add table (set id=1, origin=1, id=4, fully qualified name = 
'public.history', comment='history table', key = serial);

  #--
  # Create the second node (the slave) tell the 2 nodes how to connect to
  # each other and how they should listen for events.
  #--

  store node (id=2, comment = 'Slave node');
  store path (server = 1, client = 2, conninfo='dbname=$MASTERDBNAME 
host=$MASTERHOST user=$REPLICATIONUSER password=$MPASSWORD');
  store path (server = 2, client = 1, conninfo='dbname=$SLAVEDBNAME 
host=$SLAVEHOST user=$REPLICATIONUSER password=$SPASSWORD');
  store listen (origin=1, provider = 1, receiver =2);
  store listen (origin=2, provider = 2, receiver =1);
_EOF_

---

This is identical to the variant which worked perfectly on another 
server. And I can login to both master and slave databases on the host 
with the user/pass in the script.

But when I try to run it:

---
user at host ~/slony$ ./mkSlonyConfig.sh
<stdin>:18: loading of file /usr/local/pgsql/share//xxid.v73.sql: 
PGRES_FATAL_ERROR ERROR:  current transaction is aborted, queries 
ignored until end of transaction block
ERROR:  current transaction is aborted, queries ignored until end of 
transaction block
<stdin>:18: ERROR: no admin conninfo for node 134584768
---

A crucial difference might be that the first server ran postgresql 8.1 
and the second 7.3 (7.3.2 to be exact). Also, the second was compiled 
from source.

What am I doing wrong?