failure and silence of SQL commands - Mailing list pgsql-novice

I’m running psql version 8.1.11 on a Linux server from the command line.  It gives me absolutely no feedback from SQL commands and all SQL commands fail, but the internal psql commands such as /d or /echo all work.   I am not running it in silent mode; the command I use to start it is just the standard “psql –d database –U user”.  It tells me that I’m connected, I can examine the tables, but it won’t execute SQL.

Has anyone had similar issues? 

Thanks,

John