ok, so i have reimaged the machine and started from scratch. The install appears to have gone fine, the problem im running into is that Vhosts_ispconf.conf is not getting backed up, but somehow, new DNS entries are getting written to something... im just not sure what. its also working the way i want it to right now... so im not sure that i want to fix it... but im also afraid that it may be a larger issue that i should get corrected. not sure where to look from here.
i should be seeing vhosts_ispconfig files with a timestamp appended to them. They are not showing up.
These files are only showing up when you have a problem with your Apache configuration, so it's a good sign that they are not there. The backup file is Vhosts_ispconfig.conf~.