It doewsn't have anything to do with chroot, neither any package was broken. It's jsut that, due to bad (Maemo, not Debian - on last few pages of this thread You've listed swap settings You should use, both Maemo and ED benefit from it) swap-related settings, + swap on eMMC instead of microSD.

This made device unresponsive for too long during Debian's apt-get upgrade, and rebooted device. In turn, this FCKD Your ED image. You may try to fix it with fsck.ext* /dev/mmcblk*p* (put number instead of *, corresponding to ext type You've used for Debian image, and provide proper storage/partition numbers) - remember, to try it on *unmounted* debian image.

In case fsck doesn't help, You must start with new image from scratch. Unfortunately, it's common thing to happen - although, after unexpected reboot, I perform fsck from backupmenu before booting (I got ED started at every boot, via event.d script), thus I've never had image corruption that would destroy my ED image.

Generally, if - after crash - You fsck image before running Ed again, 99% of times You'll be fine. ho ever, if You mounted it already and tried to proceed, it may be screwed beyond repair. Just try, and report back.

/Estel