Thanks for the prompt response Dan.

By the way, any light on the second isssue:

Note that I can't even build cURL 7.12.1 on this server, as I get the following:

[root_at_new curl-7.12.1]# ./configure --with-ssl
...
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... no
checking whether g++ accepts -g... no
checking dependency style of g++... none
checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... /lib/cpp
configure: error: C++ preprocessor "/lib/cpp" fails sanity check
See `config.log' for more details.

[root_at_new curl-7.12.1]# tail -10 config.log
#define PACKAGE_TARNAME "curl"
#define PACKAGE_VERSION "-"
#define STDC_HEADERS 1
#define VERSION "7.12.1"
#define _FILE_OFFSET_BITS 64
#endif
#ifdef __cplusplus
void exit (int);

configure: exit 1

--
If possible I'd prefer to build from the latest source code! 
thanks,
Scott