Puzzle: How did I break My linux system?

[maynardGK]

I started experimentation with slackware on floppies some 15-20 years ago and have periodically returned to
install Linux periodically since. This time I've persisted until now I'm quite deep in the weeds, have re-installed,
re-partitioned, etc. many times over. Currently I'm running on cor-duo with 3 disk drives holding windows XP, Win 7, and
two copies of opensuse13.1 on 20 GB partitions, one of which is a fresh install without update the other of which
is my system that I've been doing builds on, and is now sick at the boot.
The last time I shut this down I was logged on (as root) to tty1 in addition to the X on tty7.

My suspected clue to the boot failure was that I made a version of libreadline.so(.6.3) in /usr/local/lib64 with gcc-4.8;
- gcc binaries 4.7 and above are not completely compatible with previuos gcc compiles -

My error, which comes very soon , is an inability to run /bin/bash because the shared library libreadline.so couldn't be loaded. I think the first failure it was able to find libreadline.so (located in /lib64 and pointing to libreadline.so.6.2) which was also located in usr/local/lib64, pointing to libreadline.so.6.3, which was recently compiled using gcc-4.8.
I then renamed /usr/local to /usr/newbld the the error is the same, traceback wise, but now it can't find libreadline.so; as if
bin/bash is looking where it shouldn't be, and ignoring the location where the library is waiting to be used. I'm 95% confident
the first error was not that it couldn't be found; now it is, even though /lib64 is there as it should be.

I've posted elsewhere about my concern with gcc < 4.7 to gcc >=4.7 incompatibilities; am I right to suspect this severe
error, by using local/lib64/libreadline.so.6.3(gcc-4.8) with bin/bash(gcc<gcc-4.7) ?

Now, however, having re-shuffled directories to (close to) their installed state, why might /bin/bash not find libreadline.so,
which it says is its problem.

[Yamakuzure]

[maynardGK]

Here is some more info. In the following, the sick system is mounted (from the gentoo rescuecd) as /s7 and the virgin system is mounted as /s3.