I'd give you a blow by blow, but I don't really know what happened.
I uploaded a core file this morning to block a bot and all hell broke loose.
rebooted server.
I couldn't ftp to the site. Always errored out.
rebooted server
I couldn't edit from the cpanel filemanager - wouldn't write to disk.
rebooted server
rebooted my windows machine - and like magic it had a major update.
Then everything worked.
Beats me....