sysctl.conf not being executed?

Hello all,

We're doing some work with IPv6 on RH9.0 machines and seem to have
stumbled on the fact that the sysctl.conf file is not being properly
executed. I notice that, specifically during IPv6 networking setup,
sysctl -e -p /etc/sysctl.conf should be called after init-ipv6.global

It seems to me that this should allow it to overwrite any assumptions
made in that script (e.g. init-ipv6.global will switch on forwarding
on all interfaces if it sees IPV6_ROUTER=yes in /etc/network IIRC).
Various entries that I have put into /etc/sysctl.conf are definitely
not being set. If I interactively call it from the prompt, it works
fine so I'm confident that its in the correct format.

(This also seems to tie in with the fact we've noticed on some test
machines that they don't pick up their addresses properly from
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethx)

Has anyone noticed any of this behaviour? Any workarounds? Even, any
tips to debug this?

Grateful for any insight into this which is completely stumping me...
cam