xen/kernel-xen on OS 11.1 not starting; OK on 11.0

i've been successfully running a headless install of OpenSuse 11.0 + Xen 321 as
a Xen Dom0 w/ multiple DomUs for quite awhile ...

i just built up a new OpenSuse 11.1 + Xen 331 box.
short story -- not working, and not clear as to why not, yet.

i've partitioned, as always, as RAID-1 across two disks,

	sda + sdb, each
		part1  150 MB, LinuxRaid
		part2  10 GB,  LinuxRaid
		part3  *,      LinuxRaid
	
	RAID-1
	/dev/md0 = sda1 + sdb1, mount_pt = '/boot', ext3
	/dev/md1 = sda2 + sdb2
		Volume Group "System"
			Logical Volume "Swap", mount_pt = 'swap', 512 MB, 
			Logical Volume "Root", mount_pt = '/',    * 
	/dev/md2 = sda3 + sdb3


with this setup, boot to non-xen kernel works perfectly, as it did on
OpenSuse 11.0,

	uname -a
		Linux server 2.6.27.7-9-default #1 SMP 2008-12-04 18:10:04 +0100 x86_64
		x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
	lsb_release -r
		Release:	11.1

i've installed 

	zypper in -t pattern xen-server
	rpm -qa | grep -i xen
		kernel-xen-base-2.6.27.7-9.1
		xen-libs-3.3.1_18494_03-1.8
		xen-tools-3.3.1_18494_03-1.8
		kernel-xen-2.6.27.7-9.1
		kernel-xen-extra-2.6.27.7-9.1
		xen-3.3.1_18494_03-1.8

on attempt to boot to xen kernel, it fails ...

@ boot console I see mention of '/var' not available scroll quickly by, and
something about fsck.ext3 failing ... then i'm dumped @ a console prompt.

i *can* login, but ...

/var exists and is populated, but nothing is written to /var/log/xen/xend.log
or /var/log/messages.

/boot exists, but is completely empty (?).

rebooting, I can get back to non-xen kernel and all is ok again.

checking,

	service xend start

returns simply

	xend                         unused

not sure if this is informative,

	xend
		ERROR Internal error: Could not obtain handle on privileged command interface
(2 = No such file or directory)
		Traceback (most recent call last):
		  File "/usr/sbin/xend", line 44, in <module>
			from xen.xend.server import SrvDaemon
		  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/xen/xend/server/SrvDaemon.py",
line 26, in <module>
			import relocate
		  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/xen/xend/server/relocate.py", line
28, in <module>
			from xen.xend import XendDomain
		  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/xen/xend/XendDomain.py", line 35,
in <module>
			from xen.xend import XendOptions, XendCheckpoint, XendDomainInfo
		  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/xen/xend/XendCheckpoint.py", line
20, in <module>
			from xen.xend import balloon, sxp, image
		  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/xen/xend/image.py", line 44, in
<module>
			xc = xen.lowlevel.xc.xc()
		xen.lowlevel.xc.Error: (1, 'Internal error', 'Could not obtain handle on
privileged command interface (2 = No such file or directory)')


something's changed between 11.0 & 11.1.  entirely possible i've missed some new
config req'ts.

what do I need to do to get xen behaving under 11.1?

i'm happy to provide any info -- just need some guidance as to where to look ...

patch @ https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=461673