Package: netbase Version: 1.19-1 I've now tracked down what it is that keeps reenabling my syslog's network listening: the netbase package's /etc/services file has syslog uncommented.
Commenting out the /etc/services entry is of course a very nasty way of nixing syslog's usually-undesirable network listening feature, but we should leave things that way until the syslog package is improved. Ian.