who's who

[pinniped <cirilo_bernardo@yahoo.com>]

Do you have different users for your normal and chroot environments? The next thing to check is the permissions on the /etc directory - does it have the 'x' bit set so you can see what's in that directory?  Remember that chroot does not switch the entire system - libraries loaded continue to run (and other software like the kernel itself and the original init) but all running software will invoke the new libraries when they need to load a module.  It's a pretty messy environment. :)  You just substitute the old root directory for a new one - in fact when you exit that environment you're back to the original.