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Well I tried the auto system install on one of my test sites and it worked... But they put it in another directory which I didn't care for..
Ie, instead of XOOPS being copied to "testsite.org/" it gets copied to "testsite.org/xoops/" and thus is run from "http://testsite.org/xoops/index.php" etc...
So...
Well on a hunch I copied 2.4.3 onto the server and installed it the SAME way I tried with 2.4.2 and had failed...
Don't know what happened but 2.4.3 loaded up just fine and currently online with NO glitches in the installation...
The ONLY difference was that I moved the xoops_data and xoops_lib directories out of root the first time and left them in place this time...
I have a couple 2.0.18 sites running with "trusted" paths outside of document root so I know it all works so I am writing it off to something simple that the system didn't like with 2.4.2...
So later today I will start migrating my sites to 2.4.3 and going from there... It was a session bug of some sort but now I don't need to worry about it.
Thanks again for the helpful suggestions and such.