Crash in fork.c on everything = install hosed

[Malcolm Box]

Hi,

I'm running unstable, and did an apt-get dist-upgrade this evening.  The 
result was a crash in dpkg with the following error message:

apt-get: ../nptl/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/fork.c:132: __libc_fork: 
Assertion `({ __typeof (self->tid) __value; if (sizeof (__value) == 1) 
asm volatile ("movb %%gs:%P2,%b0" : "=q" (__value) : "0" (0), "i" 
(((size_t) &((struct pthread *)0)->tid))); else if (sizeof (__value) == 
4) asm volatile ("movl %%gs:%P1,%0" : "=r" (__value) : "i" (((size_t) 
&((struct pthread *)0)->tid))); else { if (sizeof (__value) != 8) abort 
(); asm volatile ("movl %%gs:%P1,%%eax\n\t" "movl %%gs:%P2,%%edx" : "=A" 
(__value) : "i" (((size_t) &((struct pthread *)0)->tid)), "i" (((size_t) 
&((struct pthread *)0)->tid) + 4)); } __value; }) != ppid' failed.
E: Sub-process /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt || true received a 
segmentation fault.
E: Failure running script /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt || true

Near as I can tell, this is an assertion somewhere in the bowels of libc 
- a nasty place for things to go wrong.  The error seems to be affecting 
anything trying to do certain type of fork() operations.  Among others, 
it has taken out apt-get and dpkg :-(

Has anyone (a) seen anything like this (b) got a clue what's causing it 
or (even better) know how I might go about fixing this?  Right now the 
system is still usable for most things, but I don't know how a reboot 
would fare, nor how to fix the problem in the areas already affected.

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give!

Malcolm

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