Re: [gentoo-user] Re: /var/tmp/portage not empty?

[Mick]

On Wednesday 09 June 2010 09:32:40 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Jun 2010 06:03:51 +0000, Mick wrote:
> > Thanks I used reiser4progs to check and repair the fs.  The weird
> > thing is that I had to repeat this on the /var partition, after I
> > zero'ed it, reformatted it and reinstalled gentoo on it.   O_O
> >
> > How is it possible that the same directory/file gets corrupted again
> > after a reinstall?
>
> The first thing I'd do it set PORTAGE_TMPDIR to somewhere less important
> than /var. You don't want to risk corrupting system files while sorting
> this out. It would also show whether the problem was with an ebuild or
> the filesystem. Use a tmpfs filesystem if you have the memory.

I had to reinstall because I didn't catch this early enough the first time and 
it corrupted my other system partitions.  This corruption happened when I 
installed gcc-4.4.3-r2.

After I reinstalled and while still running the LiveCD I updated gcc to the 
same gcc-4.4.3-r2 version.  As I said, again I ended up with a corrupted  
'/var/tmp/portage/sys-devel/gcc-4.4.3-
r2/work/gcc-4.4.3/libjava/classpath/resource/gnu/java/locale' directory.

Running fsck.reiser4 --check and then --fix corrected the corruption and that 
was that.  Before I reinstalled, the corruption must have been more pervasive 
because fsck.reiser4 could not fix it - a simple reboot would bring it back.

So, my conclusion from this sad story is that on my system reiser4 was 
attacked by gcc!  O_O

I'd be interested to know if any other gentoo systems running a separate /var 
partition on reiser4 noticed this, in which case I'd file a bug for it.  If 
I'm alone in having this problem then I'll wait until it happens again before 
I open a bug report.
-- 
Regards,
Mick