I rebooted my Darwin test machine to see if stuff generated by the ConsoleMessage function ever got logged: there are some assertions that it does.
Well, the machine once again dropped into single-user mode and I have no idea how to get networking to work. SystemStarter is supposedly the magic wand but I’ve waved it aplenty as well as rebooted again. No joy at all. There is no en0 device to configure so networking just never happens.
It’s not as bad a disaster as the last time this happened: at least this time, I have my filesystems and user info. Still, it’s all but useless.
I have googled around and asked on the OpenDarwin list: no luck so far on a resolution.
Update: I removed the modifications I made to /etc/rc.common and everything works now.