upgrading alpha to rc2 fails on core update

I'm trying to upgrade gallery2 on an Apache2/Linux install. I'm using Apache 2.0.52 and PHP 4.3.9. I copied my alpha install dir and data dir and extracted to that copy. I changed the config file, then, and coped the database tables, renaming the copies to reflect the config file change. Basically, I made a copy of the old install, using different table prefixes and data dir, and tried upgrading the copy.

Going from "core" 0.8 to 0.9.34, the updater fails and says (line breaks inserted in path just in case the forum doesn't do that)

Error (ERROR_STORAGE_FAILURE) : Error trying to load /home/dsauer/webstuff/gallery/gallery2.rc2/modules/core/classes/GalleryStorage/
 ../../../../modules/core/classes/GalleryStorage/DatabaseStorage
 /schema/platform/mysql/A_GalleryItem_1.0.sql

I'm trying to go from one of the alphas to rc2. I don't remember which alpha, probably 1 or 2. I only half expected it to even try to work, but I'm curious if there's an easy fix or if I should just recreate the thing - which is reasonable, since the betas and alphas all told me to expect that, and I've done it several times.

I suppose it's worth noting also that the file permission check thing is rather unhelpful. When I tried upgrading the first time, it kept telling me that the permissions were wrong on my old data directory. I caved in and changed the permissions to 777 - which still makes me cringe - but that didn't fix it. So I set it back to what I know was right, and loked to the code. Adding some debug lines, I found that it was actually hitting on the "file is missing" test, looking for versions.dat (or something very similar that I remember as versions.dat). I touched the file, set its permissions correctly, and went on. Then I got stopped above. Might I suggest that, if only a couple of files (say, less than 10 or so) fail, the upgrader note which files failed, and maybe even what the failure was?

Anyway, thanks for whatever help is possible. If you need more info, lemme know.

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