Broken installation... Kernel panic... weird problem.
 

Originally, I didn't think this was going to be too difficult... While I am not Linux guru, I have been able to escape some dicey positions on my own in the past.

I first posted this at the /r/LinuxQuestions sub at Reddit... but that isn't really working. I will be posting most of the data in that thread here, but the link to that post on Reddit is below just in case: my first post at reddit.

OK.. I have a dual boot laptop—an Intel i5 sandy bridge (I think)— I had been successfully running a Kali Linux hybrid (basically it is Wheezy with a few pieces of Ubuntu added).

The last time I was in the OS, there were no problems and I exited normally. I was doing a lot of things, mostly having to do with networking, installing different gdm themes, and also I updated my kernel/kernel header files using .

Then about 5 days later, I tried to reboot into it again.... Grub was fine but after about 10 seconds, I get this on my screen:

along with some other text... But it simply froze. Below is the best I could do in capturing it with my phone:

picture at startup

Weird thing was that Grub had 3 other options for different kernels, including recovery options for those kernels, and I tried them all but they all failed (like the above).

Finally, I booted a Live USB and fsck'd my root directory (after making sure it wasn't mounted). It showed clean.

I then was going to try and update the install to see if that would help, so I mounted everything and tried to chroot. I got pretty much the same as above:

While it was mounted, I looked at the log files as well. For brevity's sake, please look at the reddit link above as I copied 30 lines from 4 or 5 different logs over there (and they are easy to find and read).

I have researched this and all of the info I can find says that this has something to do with the glibc library.... or possibly OpenGL... But I wasn't playing any games, listening to any audio, or video the last time it was working.

This distro has been working solidly since last October... so whatever I did (or whatever happened) must be an edge case.

PS: I know I will get admonished for this, but since about February... since I was running as root so frequently and needed some more space, I transferred everything to the root directory (/root/) and have been always running as root since then... but I have been careful and not reckless (and I am not going to do a by accident.

Any help on this gets my sincerest gratitude and appreciation in advance...

Let me know if you need any more data....

Thanks again!!!!

Not very much to go on.

The kernel headers are for compiling. On their own, they hardly did much. Usual pattern here is
boot kernel - mount / readonly - start init - remount / rw - boot the system stuff.

Once it's finished the roll call of bits in your box, it mounts the disks. I think that's where you're hitting trouble. Can you boot on an install cd and do a scan?

First, thanks for taking the time to read this... I have been fretting about this... I can save (most) files and just wipe and re-install, but I did a lot of tiny system tweaks that will be a pain to redo....so I really want to exhaust my attempts to fix this.

I can boot from a live USB/install flash drive, but as said above, I cannot chroot.
But beyond that, I would be thrilled to run a scan... what type of disk scan exactly do you suggest?

Have you tried using super grub disk or something similar to make sure it's not a bootloader issue?

will show you the available partitions. Decide which is the usb; that will probably be mounted, so
will tell you what is mounted as /, and identify your usb drive. Make sure the partitions you want to check are not mounted. Then
e.g. e2fsck /dev/sdb3 checks the 3rd partition of the second drive.

I had a similar problem, it all started when I tried to install some Mesa S3 drivers, it displayed an error and didn't install. Ok, didn't pay attention as everything seemed to keep working. After opening a console, it displayed that inconsistency error and exited. I said "Ok, I'll just reboot, maybe after rebooting everything get back in place."

After doing BIOS POST my pc couldn't boot, it didn't even get to start the initramfs. I died just after loading the kernel.

I grabbed a bootable working linux USB drive (but I think it can work from a LiveCD as well), tried to chroot onto the damaged installation and guess what? The same issue. Mmmm that's not a kernel problem (as I first thought), I'm working from a fully functional kernel (USB Drive)... And what in the world could it be?

Going here and there, and not finding someone that had exactly the same problem I had, and after reading also this very post, I tried something that worked for me.

I've just deleted the /etc/ld.so.cache file! Pay attention not to confuse the /etc/ld.so.cache with /etc/ld.so.cache.d and not to deleted the /etc in your actual LiveCD or USB Linux Rescue Drive. Instead, mount the damaged installation e.g

/dev/sda2 /media/mydamagedinstall

then

rm /media/mydamagedsinstall/etc/ld.so.cache

After doing that I could be able to do chroot, this very fact (that I didn't have the error when chrooting) told me that maybe if I just leave it that way and restart it could just load the rest of the system. I rebooted and voila! My system is back again!

Does your system uses initramfs/initrd. Then it's been damaged.

That's just asking for trouble...
https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDeb..._FrankenDebian

You are not an "edge case" -- you are a warning to others.

Thank you!
 

Only this, was necessary to fix my system. Thanks a lot!