Can't start Postgres . password='nil' message

I am using a droplet with ubuntu/postgres/rails. I can’t seem to get the postgres server running.

I used the tutorial at https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-ruby-on-rails-one-click-application-on-digitalocean#configuration-details and have things almost running except that the postgres server won’t start. I checked with a port scanner and the port is closed

I am getting a message of

Couldn't create database for {"adapter"=>"postgresql", "encoding"=>"unicode", "pool"=>5, "host"=>"localhost", "username"=>"rails", "password"=>nil, "database"=>"christopherg_production"}
rails@ruby-rails-postgres-nginx-unicorn-512mb-nyc1-01:~/christopherg$ postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
postgres: Postgres-XC: must start as either a Coordinator (--coordinator) or Datanode (--datanode)
rails@ruby-rails-postgres-nginx-unicorn-512mb-nyc1-01:~/christopherg$ pg_ctl start -l logfile
pg_ctl: Coordinator or Datanode option not specified (-Z)
Try "pg_ctl --help" for more information.

I tried starting it with pg_ctl start -l logfile postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

and a couple of other variations.

I’d appreciate any thoughts as to how to get postgres running

Does “password”=>nil, mean that postgres is not picking up the environment variable?