Re: [gentoo-user] Machine not booting properly: profile.env cannot execute binary file

[Alexander Kapshuk]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 9:45 PM, Andrew Lowe <agl@×××××××.au> wrote:

> On 25/10/17 11:28, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >     My machine went feral which resulted in me having to kill the power
> > to kill it. Upon reboot everything looked good, fsck did it's job,
> > [ok]'s scrolled up the screen etc and then I got the login prompt. I
> > entered my username & password and then the fun began.
> >
> >     I got:
> >
> > -bash: .: /etc/profile.env: cannot execute binary file
> >
> > If I tried any command, say ls, I got:
> >
> > -bash: ls: no such file or dir
> >
> >     I've now rebooted the machine using a relatively recent sysrescueCD
> > and had a look at profile.env and it's binary but I thought it should
> > have been text!!!! In the top line or so it mentions "ld" for some
> > reason. I checked the same file on the boot disk and it's text. One or
> > two I found on line are also text.
> >
> >     Does anyone have any idea as to what's going on here? Should I just
> > grab the profile.env from the boot disk and drop it into the /etc dir?
> > Or should I go through the whole process of chroot off a gentoo disc and
> > then run env-update as it says in the header of the text versions I'v
> seen?
> >
> >     Thoughts greatly appreciated,
> >
> >         Andrew
> >
> >
>
>         Well, I managed to work this out. I grabbed profile.env from a
> laptop
> running gentoo and using sysrescuecd booted the desktop and dropped
> profile.env into it's /etc dir. Fiddled the permissions and rebooted.
> This time after the reboot, it only told me that it couldn't find
> commands, ls, cd etc. Obviously pathing wasn't working. I found out
> where env-update lived, /usr/sbin/env-update, providing the full path to
> it, ran it then kicked over into another terminal, logged in and hey
> presto, things are good. A reboot and this was confirmed.
>
>         The cause - I have no idea. It now works so I'm happy. Thanks for
> the
> suggestions people provided,
>
>         Andrew
>
>
Posting your query on the gentoo-portage-dev mailing list might get you a
more informed response as to why this happened in the first place.