[PLUG] Strange and mysterious Linux crash

[Matt Alexander]

So my Linux box just locked up.  I was running VMWare, AIM, Konq, KMail,
and quite a few Konsole sessions.  I couldn't kill X.  So, I grudgingly
rebooted, but I got a message about a kernel panic and not finding init.
Odd.  So I booted from a floppy and mounted my filesystem.  Here's what I
found:

/bin, /lib, and /opt are no longer directories.  /bin is now a copy of my
passwd file.  /lib is now a copy of my group file.  And /opt is another
copy of my passwd file.  /usr/local/lib is now a copy of something that
looks like a sound config file, with entries like "synth:64:64:R" and
"pcm:64:64:P".

SoooooooOOOOooOOOOoOOOoo...  what the heck happened?  Any guesses?
Thanks,
~M