It looks like something in Pike_error is broken, or is it an intentional alteration that doesn't work this early in the boot process?
[nilsson@m222]$ pike70 -mx No error recovery context! Couldn't load master program. (x) [nilsson@m222]$ pike72 -mx No error recovery context! Couldn't load master program. (x) [nilsson@m222]$ pike74 -mx [nilsson@m222]$ pike75 -mx [nilsson@m222]$