What causes wordpress to forcibly direct me to <URL>/install ?

did the problem immediately occur after the move? you dont say, so im not sure what the significance of the moving is.

Usually, wordpress wants to re-install when it cant read the options table. Usually, this is a result of a crashed options table in the database. Its fixed by repairing the crashed table.

To answer your question, this happened after I moved, so I surmise because I moved. I took the hint and I fired up MySQL and asked it:

mysql> show tables;
+-----------------------+
| Tables_in_wordpress   |
+-----------------------+
| wp_comments           |
| wp_links              |
| wp_options            |
| wp_postmeta           |
| wp_posts              |
| wp_term_relationships |
| wp_term_taxonomy      |
| wp_terms              |
| wp_usermeta           |
| wp_users              |
+-----------------------+
10 rows in set (0.00 sec) 

mysql> select * from wp_options;

There is a lot of junk in that table… I see 147 rows, but some of the rows have HUGE fields. kilobytes of text. I don’t beleive this is right. So, I assume I can drop and recreate this table? Drop, can do, but recreate is a bit tickier. Can you advise me?

I wouldnt recreate the options table. if you want to pick through the rows and prune — sure; empty, truncate, etc.. and recreate — no.

It is not clear that there is really any damage. The really long rows are things like rss entries. I can read everything with no problem form the MySQL command line. I afraid it must be something else.

Do you have any more suggestions?

if youre not getting a “marked as crashed” message, if you get output, its not crashed. in that case, theres nothing to repair.

the only other thing you might want to check though while youre fiddling in the db though, is to make sure that there arent any leftover references to the old path anywhere. They would, ironically, be inside the options table.

heres something else to experiment with .. since you said it only happens on the site proper — change to the default theme. still happen?