Bill,
Thank you for the hints and pointers.
i've been looking around everywhere, in the forum and in google on this issue. my issue is i think too broad (and too dumb) for me to even know what to look for.
since the admin console isn't running, i couldn't get zmprov to work.
here's the error i'm getting:
[zimbra@xxx ~]$ zmprov gs `zmhostname`
[] INFO: I/O exception (java.net.ConnectException) caught when processing request: Connection refused
[] INFO: Retrying request
ERROR: zclient.IO_ERROR (invoke Connection refused, server: xxxxx) (cause: java.net.ConnectException Connection refused)
i've also tried zmprov -s hostname

ort gas
exact same error.
please help.
Erick