Thank you rafaelmagic, appreciate your feedback.
I believe the zip.so is on automatic now. Haven’t looked elsewhere and there was a php.ini in root to load it already as AIT suggested. I’ll play with that to see if it truly is double loading. BPSP has always activated and worked except for the php error topic. (once the mail system would deliver the activation keys to some email client somewhere–only gmail would work and AIT knows about this problem)
Yes, we have always asked “why just this site” but I never tried to use the BPSP internal install, so I’m glad this forced me to learn that process. Compiling with Zip dropped the vps out of Ruid2 configuration I discovered. But that’s fine.
Plugins: the only thing left. Two sites are almost identical except for some plugins and I disabled all these I no longer need for this site (goal achieved). Didn’t want to take the time to figure out which one, so here for posterity: bbPress Admin Bar Addition, bbPress Moderation, Genesis Toolbar Extras, Register IPs, TablePress, WP Edit. (I have TablePress on other sites.)
NO ERRORS IN 10 HOURS. Considered solved.
I am not sure what chown (ch own) permission. BPSP is not checking plugins folder. For a discussion elsewhere.