Problem with syncdb (KeyError: 'default')

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Hello, I'm new to askbot but I'm trying to mirror a setup we (my company) already has here and I run into a problem with the 'python manage.py syncdb' command. By mirror I mean we have a system running the same setup and I'm just trying to duplicate it from scratch on a new machine. My setup is:
CentOS5 (yeah, I know)
askbot 0.7.20
django 1.1.4
postgresql 8.3.18
python 2.6.5
Everything is installed in a virtualenv /home/user/askbot-install/bin and I ran askbot-setup pointing to /home/user/askbot-install/deploy. The output from the syncdb attempt I get is below. I tried removing/changing the ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX but then it just skips that warning. I feel like I'm missing something dumb. thoughts? Thanks.

python manage.py syncdb
/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/conf/__init__.py:75: DeprecationWarning: The ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX setting has been removed; use STATIC_URL instead.
  "use STATIC_URL instead.", DeprecationWarning)
/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/cache/__init__.py:82: DeprecationWarning: settings.CACHE_* is deprecated; use settings.CACHES instead.
  DeprecationWarning
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "manage.py", line 11, in <module>
    execute_manager(settings)
  File "/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 459, in execute_manager
    utility.execute()
  File "/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 382, in execute
    self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
  File "/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 261, in fetch_command
    klass = load_command_class(app_name, subcommand)
  File "/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 69, in load_command_class
    module = import_module('%s.management.commands.%s' % (app_name, name))
  File "/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/django/utils/importlib.py", line 35, in import_module
    __import__(name)
  File "/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/south/management/commands/__init__.py", line 13, in <module>
    from south.management.commands.syncdb import Command as SyncCommand
  File "/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/south/management/commands/syncdb.py", line 17, in <module>
    from south.db import dbs
  File "/home/postgres/askbot-install/lib/python2.6/site-packages/south/db/__init__.py", line 78, in <module>
    db = dbs[DEFAULT_DB_ALIAS]
KeyError: 'default'