it seems that the old version of config was the problem.  I somehow
thought that i'd gotten a new version of it in the snapshot of base.
Nope, but it was in the snapshot of comp.

For the next magic question:  is there an easy way to *remove* packages,
rather than getting a list of the tar and stepping through?  I'd loke to
get the comp stuff off of the hard drive and onto the zip.

rick