gdb error: Backtrace stopped: previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)
I've then downloaded the debug libraries which are available for the target/distribution and replaced the original shared libs with those.
This is possibly the wrong thing to do (depending on what exactly you mean by "debug libraries"), and may be contributing to your problem. See this answer.
As a first step, I would use the exact same libraries that you are using on the target, and check whether that changes the behavior of GDB.