things were smooth prior to major sid package update last week, have been down since, seems very similar to the bug #550320 filed in October. Unfortunately don't have a second Debian machine to fix (or file bugs from) [....] Freeing unused kernel memory: 560k freed [....] Write protecting the kernel read-only data: 3808k /bin/sh: error while loading shared libraries: libm.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory [....] Kernel panic - not synchingL Attempted to kill init! Call Trace... think the distribution screwed something, since the same kernel was stable before. Anyone suggestions welcome. I can boot from USB stick, mount clean, chroot and run aptitude. Thanks. -- Pat.