While downloading a Winterboard theme, Cydia spontaneously crashed while unpacking the theme. I tried the theme and found it "mostly" OK (a few icons missing that I knew should be there). Tried to go back into Cydia to re-DL and Cydia quit. Re-booted, tried again and the same thing.
Used redsn0w to reinstall Cydia, rebooted, tried to open Cydia and same thing.
When Cydia "crashed" the first time, I remember seeing "Debian" something right before it quit.
I've FTP'd into the phone to see if there were some easily recognized preferences to toss but could not find any.
Didn't really want to rebuild my new (3.12) 3G 8GB iphone.