Chrome will not run on my xfce

[rakemup]

I've searched the forums (and elsewhere) -- to no avail.

Issue: Cannot get chrome (or chromium) to run. FF runs correctly.

Error message when google-chrome is entered in command line:
[4344:4356:1260000212:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(172)] Creating shared memory in /dev/shm/.com.google.Chrome.oT3OtX failed: Too many levels of symbolic links
[4344:4356:1260000355:ERROR:shared_memory_posix.cc(175)] Unable to access(W_OK|X_OK) /dev/shm: Too many levels of symbolic links
[4344:4356:1260000385:FATAL:shared_memory_posix.cc(177)] This is frequently caused by incorrect permissions on /dev/shm. Try 'sudo chmod 1777 /dev/shm' to fix.
Aborted

Error message when chmod 1777 entry is made:
chmod: cannot access `/dev/shm': Too many levels of symbolic links

Hardware:
Dell laptop - 4G ram
Release 1 (debian)
Kernel Linux 3.0.0-1-686-pae
GNOME 3.0.2
plenty of room in the partitions

Any ideas? I've tried Chrome from Synaptic and from the google-chrome site.

I've tried to find links that are broken with:
tclap1 tc # find -L -type l
./.config/chromium/SingletonSocket
./.config/chromium/SingletonLock
./.config/chromium/SingletonCookie
./.config/google-chrome/SingletonLock
./.config/google-chrome/SingletonCookie
./.mozilla/firefox/mwad0hks.default/lock

and with:tclap1 tc # find / -type l ! -exec test -r {} \; -print
/lib/modules/2.6.32-5-686/build.save
/var/run/shm
/proc/2/task/2/exe
/proc/2/exe
/proc/3/task/3/exe
/proc/3/exe
/proc/6/task/6/exe
/proc/6/exe
/proc/7/task/7/exe
/proc/7/exe
/proc/8/task/8/exe
/proc/8/exe
/proc/10/task/10/exe
/proc/10/exe
/proc/12/task/12/exe
/proc/12/exe
/proc/13/task/13/exe
/proc/13/exe

etc etc etc

[proxima_centauri]

There seem to be some solutions here.