> libc.so.12.14 causes *EVERYTHING* to dump core; unfortunately, I can't
> tell whether it conflicts with my kernel or my old binaries.
> If I remove it, I can at least get getty to run, but everything on
> the system claims it expects a minor version >= 14.  (Well, nearly
> everything)>

Presumably if your binaries demand version >=14, they are fairly recent.
I'm running with libc.so.12.14 built on May 4, and a recent kernel, so
I'd guess it's a kernel version problem ;-).  It might, however, be that
some very recent change to libc broke it without bumping the version number.