Okay, I'll put everything that I can think of. I'm at work right now so I don't have access to the system right now.
Installed Red Hat 7.2, Oracle 8.1.7, and Aolserver really without much incident. I used the instructions at http://www.idevelopment.info/data/DBA_tips/DBATIP_54.shtml in conjunction with the installation instructions provided here. The idevelopment instructions were the clearest ones I could find regarding some of the patches, rpm, etc. that need to be done to get oracle to properly install.
I then followed the instructions regarding dotlrn about getting the latest cvs build for acs and dotlrn. So, for my first installation the code was dated about 5/20. I then retried it with code 5/24ish but had the exact same error message.
This is my first time to really dig into this stuff and I'm still unfamiliar with many of the details and so I really tried not to divert away from the instructions at all. I could find no syntax error in the line above. If you think it is worthwhile I could include my 00-proc-procs.tcl and bootstrap.tcl when I get back home.
After being unable to figure out what syntax error it was indicating I did try commenting out the line just to see how far it would go. It got a lot farther but ended up getting an error in, I think it was called, 40-proc-procs.tcl but I'd have to retry it if the error message associated with that will help any.
I'm sorry if this is a bit vague but I'm not sure what information will be the most helpful. If you can tell me what will help I'll do what I can to get it.