Aha!
Some more extensive googling turned up a clue -- it's not ksymoops-specific.
What apparently happens is, some naughty application installs either (a) a new version of libbfd.(a|so), or (b) a new version of libiberty.(a|so) , so the two don't match.
The solution is to download, compile, and re-install binutils :)
Oh, and btw: binutils by-default installs them to /usr/local/lib/; however the offending versions are typically (at least, they were in my case, and I have Slack 8) in /usr/lib. So you'll likely need to do what I did:
cd /usr/lib
mv libbfd.a libbfd_old.a
mv libiberty.a libiberty_old.a
voila! ksymoops compiled & linked & installed (& worked!) just fine.
----
pardon me while i use this as scratch space to copy the oops down
/me wouldn't mind a null-modumb cable for a serial console atm...
----
Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000010
printing eip:
c01366ee
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0000
CPU: 0
EIP: 0010:[<c01366ee>] Not tainted
EFLAGS: 0010286
eax: 00001000 ebx: 0000000e ecx: 00000008 edx: 00002012
esi: 00000008 edi: 00002012 ebp: 00000000 esp: c12cfd78
ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
Process swapper (pid: 1, threadinfo=c12ce000 task=c12cc040)
Stack: 00001000 00002012 00000000 c1376800 c1376800 c0136d98 00000000 00002012
00001000 c1376800 d180b000 d181c3ec c0136f9f 00000000 00002012 00001000
c1376800 c01769e6 00000000 00002012 00001000 00000302 00000000 c1376954
Call Trace: [<c0136d98>] [<c0136f9f>] [<c01769e6>] [<c0135ec0>] [<c0169068>]
[<c016992c>] [<c018062c>] [<c013b659>] [<c013a300>] [<c0169d0f>] [<c0169808>]
[<c013a4d0>] [<c014b0f9>] [<c014b3d0>] [<c014b214>] [<c014b7f0>] [<c010527d>]
[<c0105073>] [<c0106fac>]
Code: 0f b7 45 10 b0 00 66 0f b6 55 10 01 d0 0f b7 c0 89 44 24 10
<0>Kernel panic: Attempted to kill init! <- always fun
-- Stevie-OReal programmers use COPY CON PROGRAM.EXE
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