I seem to have answered my own question when searching the debian repositories ... I came across a moodle 1.8.2 installation package which I have installed with all "success" listed during the moodle installation (http://localhost/moodle/admin/). I did make a copy of the 1.6 install into a directory named /usr/share/moodle_16/moodle$ just incase something goes wrong ... although there was a big warning during the 1.8.2 installation that the installation process "can not be reversed" ... so we'll be hopeful I've proceeded accordingly (my apologies about being a maverick).
This last round has been even smoother than the 1.6 install on the old clunker.
I haven't migrated my course information yet ... now to see how that goes.
Installing and upgrading help
Problem installing on Ubuntu 7.04 sans Internet
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