@ncommander With the bash core files, do you happen to have a stack traces? Are you setting your locale to something other than "en_US.UTF-8"? I recall hearing this was happening late last year, for folks using locales that they haven't installed on the machine -- I believe it is, sadly, a bash/libreadline bug. See this thread: https://illumos.topicbox.com/groups/omnios-discuss/T45307281d4837de9-Md4c3ab60dfea76fbad6febb0
When you were having trouble with stuff, were you reaching out on our mailing lists and/or via IRC? We try to help when folks are struggling!