My b2evolution Version: 1.10.x

I recently upgraded from 2.2 to 2.4 (awesome!, thanks all).
So far, I have 2 new issues perhaps YOU could help with:

1- "permanent link to full entry" on a public post leads to this error message:
"No input file specified."

and

2- I have a custom page made to only display the post content, not the skin w/headers, footers, etc. With version 2.2 I could pass the params
(as listed in the docs here: http://manual.b2evolution.net/URL_Parameters#cat)

posts=1&cat=17
and
posts=1&cat=-17 (category exclusion)

now neither work as they did. User is redirected to the blog index page and away from the custom page. However, catsel[] (catsel%5B%5D) does work just fine, no redirection. (but is not ideal since I can not use this in exclusion mode).

Any help before I go tearing through the voluminous source code would be greatly appreciated.