Ok...don't know WHAT in the name of all that's good is going on, but it's working. And HOW it's working is bizarre, at least to me.
Let's say my original root directory was /srv/www/htdocs/APPLICATION. Fine...was working with 2.x with no problems on older
server. So of course, I copied everything over in the same structure to the new server, and got the error(s) above. Following Steve's
advice, I created a new directory of /srv/www/htdocs/APP. Test 'hello world' worked...interesting. Since I had nothing to lose, I
literally just copied my original directory contents to the new folder...and it all worked. No errors/problems/whining. Had to remove
some references to the control panel, but other than that...everything going.
And all I did was change the base directory. Not sure why that would make a difference, since all the references in the old location
were identical to the old server.