My previous scenario was bogus because the working virtual machine had the etch kernel in its config file. when I changed it to use lenny's xen kernel, it showed the symptomps.
sorry for the misinformation and bugspam. -- Gokdeniz Karadag -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org