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

[Dale]

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
>
>

I've heard of that problem you have before but can't recall what causes
it.  This should give you some links to look into in the meantime.

https://www.startpage.com/do/search?q=%2Fetc%2Fprofile.env%3A+cannot+execute+binary+file&lui=english

My main reason for replying, you may want to enable the Sys-Rq key
sequence, if it isn't already.  While rare, I sometimes get a hard lock
up and at least that gives file systems a chance to sync up and to have
a normal and safe umount of partitions. 

http://www.linuxhowtos.org/Tips%20and%20Tricks/sysrq.htm

Hope that helps.

Dale

:-)  :-)