I finally found time to install a new VSIDO setup and have found the issue and now know what has been causing inxi to need sudo to run
inxi is part of smxi script package and now is a symlink to smxi instead of being it's own file, which is why Sector11 kept seeing it as a 14k file.. that is the size of the symlink
This requires running inxi as sudo because that is a smxi requirement.
Solution - You can get the independent version of inxi and place it in your path and never have to use sudo again. The issue with this is it will never be updated, unless you go out and update it manually. This is an issue because it was updated just today within smxi
The VSIDO solution is to keep it just as it is, within the smxi scripts as a symlink and will require sudo to run it. This will guarantee that inxi will stay updated. I would recommend an alias of sudo inxi so that you only have to enter your password when you run it.
I think what has changed just recently is that smxi changed it from a full install of inxi to the symlink model.
At least I now know what is going on...
@Sector11 - Thanks for all your help on this!