Here’s something that doesn’t make me happy to see:

[root@lava2054 ~]# tail /var/log/messages
Segmentation fault
[root@lava2054 ~]# dmesg
-bash: dmesg: command not found
[root@lava2054 ~]# sync;reboot
-bash: sync: command not found
reboot: error while loading shared libraries: libattr.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Ack. *runs off to find the problem*

Update:

Turns out that one of the partitions in the LVM that was the / partition (I *hate* RedHat’s default partitioning) died, which caused the machine to panic every time I booted. Since I needed the particular machine by the end of the day and didn’t have a lot of time to debug what went wrong, I just performed a fresh install. Problem Fixed (If a little ungracefully).