Thanks to Kirk Lowery, I have figured out why I could not start the zope server. This appears to be a debian problem, but perhaps others have it, too. In order to start zope, /var/lib/zope/instance/default/var needs to be owned by root with the sticky bit set. As soon as I made this change, there was much joy in our collab group. However, I am now unable to pack ZODB. That generates a 'permission denied' for trying to write to that directory. This is how I got into trouble in the 1st place - when I installed PloneCollectorNG, I got a 'permission denied' message and had to change ownership of that directory to zope. So, in order to start zope, the directory needs to be owned by root. In order to, for example, pack ZODB, the directory needs to be owned by zope. Kirk has filed a bug @ bugs.debian.org dennis - have gudulka, will travel http://KafanaKlub.com