tried step 1 and 2 against a clean/fresh install of 6.5b1
step one performed fine - no errors. Thanks!
step two gave a grantor error, and when the server rebooted, gave a lot of mysql update errors, but it looks as though mysql did not start, when I ran a service mysql start, it started up fine, and webmail worked fine.
I'm looking forward to the completion of your php update, and the imp/turba scripts...
thanks for your work.