The 1.5 upgrade sysinst thang fscks my partitions, asks me "MARK THIS
PARTITION CLEAN? [yn]", then when I answer "y" it says that it couldn't
mount the partition and gives up.

For such a minor upgrade, might just untaring all the sets (after moving
/etc aside) then moving /etc back suffice, along with a kernel recompile?

ABS

-- 
                               Alaric B. Snell
 http://www.alaric-snell.com/  http://RFC.net/  http://www.warhead.org.uk/
   Any sufficiently advanced technology can be emulated in software