Actually, the problem seems to have been that notifications wasn't mounted at all, though that doesn't quite fit the error. I had forgotten to mount it, which I did not realize until I had done a complete reinstall and went through the instructions again. This time forums worked ok.
FYI, I don't seem to be able to mount attachments. It's installed and enabled, and shows up in the APM as an application, but it's not available in the list of applications to choose from in the site map.