being at the machine, physically, I can select from the grub2 menu at boot, apparently the older suse leap 15.5 kernels, although the lines show as leap 15.6 but with those 5.something kernels. i can boot the .52 kernel at the end, that was the last one this then-15.5 machine has gotten (i think some .59 kernel for 15.5 came out yesterday or so I remember), just fine with 15.6 apparently. i took the machine off from the network and it sits now standalone on the desk. I guess I could extract some zypper log files or something if anyone points me to?