I appreciate your insight and expertise.
Things I tried:
Update from admin panel (failed/never started)
Followed the manual updating discourse steps (over the past 3 releases)
Did several launcher app rebuilds.
Searched the forum for a similar issue and solution
Finally resorted to a chatgpt query which uncovered redis options even though chatgpt itself said an unlikely fix (and suggested the things I had already tried).
This was the one action I took that resolved the issue.
I understand the analogy.
What else could I have done to better understand and resolve the problem as an alternative?