[Bealgebone] login: on ttyS0 Cannot make/remove an entry for the specified session

I had this same problem with the 2012.12 image that shipped with BeagleBone Black.
Then I upgraded to 2013.06.20. It booted OK a few times, then I got the same error:
“Cannot make/remove an entry for the specified session”

And networking stopped working so I can’t SSH in to fix it.
So I made a bootable SD card and booted off it so I could fix the eMMC linux partition according to the suggestions in this thread.
But none of the things in this thread exist in my system. Not SQL, not alsa.

Now what?

Thanks,
Jim