Description of Problem: /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql startup script does not read any configuration file for 'postmaster' options. Therefore if one needs to pass some extra, like '-i' to make database accessible over a network, one has to edit this script one way or another.
You don't need them. You can set all these in /var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf
Indeed. But this is not so obvious and easy for a beginner to find that in documentation. How about a comment to that effect in /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql, with references to more extensive documents (section 3.4 in html docs and README.rpm-dist) on the subject? It is easy to find when known what to look for but documents one is likely to read when starting clearly say that '-i' is needed.