newbie problem on creating table

I am trying to get a start with Postgres 6.4 on Suse Linux 6.4. I

created a

superuser who is allowed to create databases. I created a user and a
database, but I didn't manage so far to create a table. It just returns
"Error cannot create <tablename>.

The owner of your database might the postgres superuser. You will have
to set the permissions or the owner accordingly. The latter can be
done in 7.0.x as superuser with:

UPDATE pg_database
SET datdba=<uid of new user>
WHERE datname=<name of db in question>
;

I checked pg_database: The datadba for the database is root and I am
accessing the database as root.
any other ideas?