5
I did attempt the mainfile.php into the xoops directory and I made sure it was 777
this is weird. I deleted everything, untar'd 2.5.7 and attempted the install again. It failed again same as before. I also put mainfile.php into the xoops directory and same thing. this was to make sure that ports on freeBSD wasn't patching any files.
however, checksum.php shows a bunch of missing files in the root directory. So, I downloaded 2.5.6 and installed it. started up the browser and it immediately went through the install and XOOPS is now running.
The missing files are missing from the tar ball. I'd have to check where 2.5.7 was downloaded from by "make install" in /usr/ports/www/xoops was all I used to get it.
I'm going to attempt to upgrade to 2.5.7 now and we'll see how that goes.