library misbehaviour in terminals

Strange one. I'll use points for the sake of brevity.

- upgraded Dapper -> Edgy -> Feisty
    - Dapper -> Edgy via network
    - Edgy -> Feisty reinstall with desktop CD
- in Edgy -> Feisty reinstall, I preserved my home partition and data
- most everything is fine, *except*
- I found when I ssh from work to home, most commands return complaints re missing libraries
- Examples:
$ ls
ls: error while loading shared libraries: librt.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

$ locate librt.so.1
locate: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

$ cat .bashrc
cat: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

$ strace ls
strace: error while loading shared libraries: libc.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

- not *all* commands
$ echo This is weird.
This is weird.

- this problem also occurs in virtual terminals, C-A F1 etc.
- those files *do* exist, as can be discovered from a local GUI terminal, e.g. gnome-terminal or xterm, in which everything runs sans problem

- this occurred after both Dapper -> Edgy via the network, and Edgy -> Feisty reinstall
- have manually run ldconfig, but it does not clear up the problem
- have also rebooted a couple times since reinstall. no help.