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1b1ed1a
(Get the code!)
My experience with this bug has been severe and painful. On certain boxes, both Intel and AMD, I can make it happen every time, using this process:
1. install 7.10
2. upgrade 7.10
3. change /etc/apt/
4. apt-get update
5. apt-get dist-upgrade
At this point these boxes will appear to run fine, but certain processes will experience bus errors. A reboot will often fail to boot completely (/bin/sh get bus errors). The problem appears to be that glibc was corrupted during the upgrade process, so everything which depends on it will get bus errors. I managed to rescue a box in this state by booting off the 7.10 CD, copying libc from the CD over the one on the disk, which was enough to get debusums and apt-get to work. Then I could use debsums and apt-get to reinstall any packages which were damaged. I now use debsums between steps 4 and 5 whenever I upgrade a box. Mostly it is fine, but sometimes packages (various ones, but usually the list includes libc) fail the debsums test; an "aptitude reinstall " before booting sorts them out.
All the machines where this problem occurred were installed with a small /boot as ext3 and / as xfs. I dunno if that's a factor. Some machines never showed this problem. It's becoming less of an issue now that 8.04's out, and the wave of upgrading 7.10 boxes has passed.