what is the output?

That would point to the direction that it was a 32-bit system, after all. A 32-bit system has only /lib. In both 32- and 64-bit Slackware, modules and firmware are in /lib. But shared libraries are in /lib64 (64 bits) or /lib (32 bits), for example libc.so.6 which points to libc-2.38.so.

It's a multilib system, and I definitely have had a /lib64 directory before (and there's a /usr/lib64 directory).
But for some reason, maybe when I've been fiddlin with compiling audacity, they have been merged...

I did copy the /lib64 library from the USB to /mnt/sda1. Now I can chroot into /mnt. Kernel panic went away, but instead booting hangs om permission issues with var/log ...

And since the USB stick wasn't fully upgraded, there were some package mismatches. Will upgrade, repeat, and see what happens.

I don't think they have merged. In a multilib system you have libraries with same names in /lib and /lib64, e.g. /lib64/libc-2.33.so and /lib/libc-2.33.so. You can't merge them to one directory. I guess your USB stick is not multilib, so it has no libraries in /lib. In your SDD you see the correct compat32 libraries in /lib that you had before but you lost all the corresponding 64-bit libraries when you lost /lib64.

It could be a good idea to umount it and run 'e2fsck -f /dev/sda1'. It's possible that your file system is not quite healthy if it loses a directory...

If e2fsck doesn't find anything, I would chroot again and run 'slackpkg reinstall slackware64'.

By the way, what does this directory /sda1 in your SSD root contain? Maybe you have accidentally renamed /lib64 to /sda1 ?

I really don't know what I've broken... too late now to continue, will reinstall slackware tomorrow, seems to be the best option.

Thanks for all helpful suggestions.

Just a note to possibly prevent reoccurrence:

It is wise to be very careful when slackpkg is updated and we get "/etc/slackpkg/mirrors.new" files that we make certain the mirror we select is the appropriate 32bit or 64bit version. I commonly delete all lines for 32bit as well as all country subsections I'll never use on 64bit systems.

That root directory looks odd. My guess is that an incorrect command was given that dumped stuff into directory sda1 (which doesn't exists as a directory) when it should have been device sda1. I'm curious if /lib64 is in there. If it is, you could probably fix this else a reinstall is in order.

After a few futile and time-consuming efforts to repair the / partition I finally reinstalled. Getting a working system up and running was a question of minutes, but reinstalling 3rd party stuff (with dependencies) and tweaking everything after my liking took ages (even if I'd managed to keep my /home partition).

I suspect that I somehow managed to give a disastrous command when trying to compile audacity-3.4.0, which affected the /lib64 directory.

Seeking consolation in that one learns from one's mistakes.

Thanks for all helpful input.

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