Ok, so I see I'm having a nice conversation with myself :)
Anyway, just to document my trek through this linux mission impossible - just beware of how your MySQL gets setup up - there are some defaults that can kick into gear based on the variant you are using - I'm not sure if my problem was related to Mandrake - but MySQL wanted to stick the temporary file access into the root director (hence /root/tmp) - this won't work if you are running your MySQL as 'mysql' user. workaround: --tmpdir=/tmp/
Take Care and never quit,
Chris

After some additional testing, I've about settled on the fact that is has something to do with the MySQL version or options. I loaded 2.0.10 beta 2 on another machine (redhat w/apache 2.0.52, MySQL 3.32 and php 4.3.8) and it worked fine no problems right off. So, here's my next question - has anyone used MySQL 4.x? Did you have to make any special modifications to the config files? Did you use the pre-canned binary or did you compile the MySQL source yourself?
Thanks,
Chris

Ok - I just installed 2.0.10, went through much review - then thought I'd try an older version of XOOPS - 2.0.3 - got the same issue. I'm on mandrake, apache 2.0.5x, MySQL 4.0, php 4.3.1 - it's a fairly clean system - anyone got any place to looks? I've looked at the apache logs which look pretty clean. I've turned debugging on in the common.php but I don't see any errors.
Please help!
Thanks,
Chris

yeah, I've been using it for a few weeks now - it worked out of the box for me... the main complaint I have right now is deleting files doesn't delete the file - it just adds a 'restore' link on the right side of the file list.
Other than that, it's been fine.